How to organise FramerJS event and fail, or not :)
I missed first FramerJS meetup on summer 2015 cause of my leg injury during the race before). That time Framer seemed to me something really cool, but very hard to get into just sitting, looking into docs and tutorials by myself at home. So I was just waiting for my next opportunity to dive into world of prototyping by code at some meetup in the UK.
I was following the one and only Kate Pincott ) on twitter. She was the organiser of first Framer JS event along with Adrian Forster. From her tweet, I discovered that next meetup will be in November 2015. So I signed up instantly. And got a message from her , that she is searching for mentors for the event, and maybe I would like to come to speak. At that moment I wasn’t using Framer at all — so, of course, I signed up to be a mentor). It was about one week before the event, so I desperately needed to learn Framer basics quickly and build a sample project that I can showcase on meetup.
Fortunately, I found amazing skillshare course by Noah Levin https://www.skillshare.com/classes/design/Mobile-App-Prototyping-Designing-Custom-Interactions/382444545 which can really teach you basics of Framer in just one hour. After I have finished it, I started to look in what kinda project I want to build and teach others — something that is not that complex to understand for the beginners, easy for me to create during my evenings before meetup and attractive enough to show the power of Framer platform. I decided to use Android settings interaction screen as the sample project.
I used utils.modulate which is one of the features of Framer I use a lot when doing my prototypes. You can read more on that in this article -
I asked my friend Anton Borzov from Whatsapp to come and be the second mentor. Anton was at the first event and knew Framer on a good level at that time, and was using it at his work.
Things went really smooth, we were having fun prototyping and learning code for like 4 hours. About 10–12 people showed up.
I really liked the process of learning new things myself and speaking to people and trying to teach them how to use Framer. So after that, I was trying to write some Framer tutorials, modules and of course, I always wanted to speak on next meetup)
Unfortunately, Kate was very busy and wasn’t able to spend time organising a new event on Framer. So I reached Adrian Forster, who was co-host of the previous event with Kate and asked his opinion on doing new meetup.
He was happy to do it — the only problem was the venue. Since I wanted the event to be free — its hard to find a venue in London that will host events for free). On that moment, I met Rhys Merritt, who is working in Lastminute.com, and was on previous Framer event, whether he knows someone who can help with venue. And it turned out — his company can host meetup.
So we have got the ball rolling — we had venue, we had mentors, we didn’t have any plan on what to do on event and didn’t have guests.
I contacted Framer team on this topic and they were really cool bout helping us to do things. Sara Surh provided us with some promo materials like t-shirts, stickers, promo codes for Framer studio. Framer team also has community account on nvite.com platform — so you can register your Framer event using it. Your event will be listed on global framer events list, you will also get publicity in their email campaign.
After we start promoting event — we’ve got pretty impressive list of people coming — bout 45, which was huge (event before was just bout 12). So it started to look like a problem — how to entertain this big amount of people, how to organise everything.
I went to Framer slack channel to ask advice on organising meetup. I always recommend this slack group it to all new framers- https://framer-slack-signup.herokuapp.com, really cool guys out there trying to help everyone. Got some good tips from Jordan Robert Dobson and Stephen N. Crowley , who are running Seattle meetups.
Before event I thought everyone will be drinking beer and code). That was the mistake) We have created a survey to ask people preference on event plan and drinks and realised most of the people are interested in juice and water:). Survey results here — https://mamezito.typeform.com/report/GFXOk8/BdR0
At night before event I was still struggling on perfect plan. Problem was how to make things entertaining for newbies and advanced people. I decided I will just go with the flow and ask audience on next steps after presentation — http://slides.com/sergeyvoronov/framerlondon#/ on framer generally and some project showcases and Q&A.
Based on feedback from folks I started doing retype code project from screen session, which turned out to be boring for advanced people, so when we realised it, we broke people to groups and all advanced guys went to other room to do small hackathon project.
After event, I feel disappointed that failed to engage advanced people, but lesson learned — if you are doing Framer event — brake people to groups from start — so everyone can have fun.
We will adjust our planning on events, and want to organise next #FramerLondon event sometime in July. We want to run Framer events on regular basis — so if you have an idea on free venue for us, for example your team is interested to start using Framer and want to get into — you can help us with next venue — we are happy to come to any company in London (or South West UK) to teach people on Framer.
I want to thanx Framer Team, Lastminute.com company, all attendees and of course my friends who helped me to organise everything Rhys Merritt, Adrian Forster
Thank you for reading this also) any feedback or suggestions on event planning — welcomed.
