French Language Kinship Spurs Selfless Passion
The art of group conversations and forming lasting friendships
INTRODUCTION
French is my first language. Years ago, when I lived in a suburb of Philadelphia, I got to thinking that I should try to find some people who are interested in learning to speak it and contribute my time to help them in that pursuit.
After looking online for “language exchange” and “French meetup”, I came across meetup.com, a website where anyone could host a group and schedule events for a small monthly subscription fee. There, I found a French Language Group with an upcoming meeting scheduled. It seemed like no one had signed up to go, however.
So I looked at the message board and noticed that it had been inactive for some time. Neither the organizer nor the members were posting anything. It essentially looked like someone’s pet project that had fallen by the wayside.
I decided to post a bilingual message, in French and in English, letting anyone who might come across it know that I’d be interested in meeting to make conversation and help them practice speaking French.
JOINING MY FIRST MEETUP
A couple of days later I was notified via my inbox that someone had replied to me. It was a woman who lived on the outskirts of the city. There were still one or two meetups that the organizer had scheduled on the calendar ahead of time, so we signed up for the next one, on a Saturday, and agreed to meet at the selected location.
On that day, three of us showed up around the same time, and another joined a little later. It was a very small group of people, and I was the only native speaker there. The other participants’ levels covered beginner, low intermediate, and upper-intermediate (“fluent”). Two of the three had tried joining this group previously, but no one had shown up. So this meetup group had been as good as dead.
At that time, I mostly kept to one-on-one interactions with friends and colleagues rather than group interactions. So, socializing with a group of total strangers while also feeling the pressure to drive the conversation was definitely something new. From what I remember, we ended up talking for nearly 3 hours. It was a pleasant experience overall, one where everyone felt that they got something out of it.
BECOMING THE ORGANIZER
The other participants were eager to find out if I was planning to come back. So I agreed to meet with them again in the next week and everyone got up to leave. I ended up going to lunch with the person I had exchanged messages with originally and talking about this meetup group. She mentioned that perhaps I could become the co-organizer. “Meh.” That didn’t sound particularly interesting to me.
I told her that I would ask the organizer if he’d be interested in transferring the ownership of the meetup group to me instead. Mostly because it was already registered and I could save a little bit of time on setting it up, although I would have to change whatever content existed on there already. I had a clear vision* in mind for what I felt a group like this could become, and in order to get there, I would need full control over the decision-making.
*My vision was to make this a friendly group that would welcome people of any level (beginners often feel excluded from such groups because they simply don’t get much attention from the regular members and organizers) with a focus on sparking conversation in a comfortable and non-threatening environment. One thing that I always remained adamant about is that I did not want this language meetup group to be one where people went to look for a date. I asked everyone to be respectful of the group’s purpose and reason for existing.
It had to be fun, helpful and focused on people making progress, all in a casual laid-back atmosphere. Everyone could attend, from high school seniors (with parental permission) all the way up to retirees. I had enjoyed taking part in various language exchanges over the years myself and I really looked forward to the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, and hopefully make some new friends while stimulating conversation between them.
This also had to be a passion project since a) it was out of my way (I had to drive a minimum of 50 minutes down the highway to get there), and b) I would be out of pocket to cover the monthly subscription fee (~$9.99).
I also figured that, in order to make the group a success, I would need to consistently host the weekend meetups over a period of weeks, or even months, before it caught any real traction and started to regularly attract new participants.
I reached out to the organizer and he quickly agreed to transfer it to me. I renamed it, cleared all of the old information, and entered my own information on the web pages, essentially turning it into a completely new group all of my own, with a fresh start and approach. The woman with whom I had discussed it over lunch became my co-organizer. We were becoming fast friends already, both excited to breathe some new life into this thing.
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE GROUP’S TIMELINE
All-in-all I ended up running this French-language group for a total of 14 months. It started with no active members, and eventually grew to 500 members. I always kept the Saturday meetup on the schedule, and it would last anywhere from 2–3 hours each time, right after lunch.
Attendance started with around 4 people each weekend, and eventually peaked at around 25, which completely maxed out the space we could take up in the Cafe that I booked every week. The owners let me reserve parts of the space in the back with a few tables as long as my attendees bought something to drink or snack on while there.
A few months into it I added a mid-week meetup at a different location. This one was attended by anywhere from 6–12 people each time, and not necessarily by the same participants that came on the weekend. It took place in the evening, so I would drive there right after work, about one hour with traffic, host the meetup, then do some scheduled IT work later in the evening from my co-organizer’s house or some other place with internet access, before getting back home around 11:00p. It was definitely a long day.
THE ART OF GROUP CONVERSATIONS
From the get-go, I took the following approach to work toward my goals of improving my group conversation and hosting skills, as well as growing the group:
- Try my best to always get there a few minutes before everyone, and if I couldn’t* then make sure that my co-organizer would get there first because she lived closer
*Never underestimate the importance of your role as a group leader. There were a few occasions when I arrived 5–10 minutes after some of the members and everyone was mostly silent. Despite the fact that several of them knew each other from previous meetups, they didn’t feel comfortable enough to start until I arrived and helped them break the ice.
- Welcome everyone with a warm greeting, and often a handshake, too. Thank them for joining and find out how their week and day were going (make everyone feel at ease)
- For small areas and small groups of people (6–8): have everyone sit in a circle
- For larger areas: have 3–4 persons sit around each table, or form smaller circles
- I would navigate the room, sitting next to different people in the circle, and at the different tables, making sure that every group and as many individuals as possible got a chance to talk with me (occasionally there would be other native French speakers that would attend as well)
- At the close of the meetup: thank everyone again for attending, and remind them to leave feedback for each event when they got back home. The average rating always stayed high at around 4.7–4.8/5.0, out of 100s, or maybe even > 1000 entries, and many people also left optionally typed up comments
OTHER GROUP ACTIVITIES
Once in a while, I organized other group activities such as French movie watching (small, private room with projector and projection screen), Zip lining, museum tours, and similar. I occasionally collected donations to help me break even (never profit from it) as well.
FORMING LASTING FRIENDSHIPS
Quite often, a group of us would leave the meetup to go have lunch or dinner together, depending on the day and time. And some of these people became very good friends of mine that I still keep in touch with to this day, many years later. They and their families came from a number of different countries, and it’s unlikely that we would have crossed paths in any other way.
CONCLUSION
Launching a free-to-attend language meetup, or other “special interest” group can go a long way in helping you to develop better social communication and group leadership skills, as well as make new friendships and even business connections if you’re so inclined. It’s easy to get started; All you need is a passion, a location, and a little courage!
Q. Would you consider organizing your own meetup? What would its topic and focus be?
All the best,
Pascal
PS: You can read about how I changed careers, by going from working in IT to teaching English overseas, something that was driven partly by my fondness for participating in language exchanges over the years. Or go here to read my suggestions for learning French through the exciting and fun world of comic books. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments and let me know if you’d like to read more from me on this topic, or perhaps another topic related to the content I’ve addressed here, or perhaps read more about me here.
