Best practices to start your own meetup

While spending some years active in organising meetups in the blockchain scene I learned a lot. Both from own experiences as those from fellow organisers.

In this post I will try to give you a list which will get you started and will probably increase your chances on a successful meetup or series.

1. Engage a community

Starting your new meetup works best if you are able to start off with a community. Assuming you don’t have one yourself, you best reach out to other communities which operate close to your topic. The more you can partner with, the better.

Good example was the Dutch Blockchain Week which reached out to all blockchain communities in The Netherlands to organise events during Money 2020.

2. Find a location which fits your bill (and purpose)

The risk of having to pay for a location and then nobody shows up is probably what keeps a lot of people from organising events. And location matters! It needs to be accessible, affordable and breathe the right atmosphere.

Try to look for smart collaborations. Some locations, like co-work spaces, are keen on inviting new people into their location as it might attract new customers. They will happily let you use event spaces for free or minimal costs (cleaning, security, etc).

3. Get a sponsor, arrange food/drinks

You will attract more people to your event if you serve sponsored food and/or drinks. Maybe you can find sponsors related to your topic, Like Komodo Pioneers for anything related to Komodo tech.

4. Create an attractive program

Some people like talks, some like hands-on workshop style, some like discussion, everybody likes to network.

Makes sure you have an interesting program and people will value it!

5. Choose your event date wisely

Every date has it’s own dynamic. Fridays are lazy (lots of beer helps), Mondays have to stop early (week is just beginning), Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday face competition.

Read in to your competition and plan carefully!

6. Use feedback for future events

It might be you become addicted to organising events, if so, use all feedback to improve on future events. There are plenty of tools to gather feedback during and after the event and during the networking you can find out a lot by asking people what they liked and disliked.

7. Get some helping hands!

It’s much more fun together than it is alone. So get a small passionate team together!

8. And get them to record the event

Talks are nice for video, workshops for photos and interviews. Get someone to generate some buzz by tweeting during the event. Agree on a shared hashtag and put it on a whiteboard or wall so people can use it. encourage the crowd to tweet as well. For instance by putting a reward on most likes with the hashtag used.

9. Make slides available

Let’s say your community is activated with the use of Meetup.com, then use the comments to update your attendees on the slide decks that were used. Of course, if the speakers let you.

10. Thank people for attending

Don’t forget to thank all who attended or were trying to attend. It is really cool if you can add the slide decks, video’s and photos of the event too.

Hopefully you and the attendees started a long term relationship with many more events to follow!

Ready to kickstart with your own Komodo meetup?

Organize a Komodo meetup in your local area! Get in contact with Komodo Pioneers for funds & help. Learn more from our previous post: Komodo Rebrand Campaign: Meet The New Komodo.