Event Format for Wicked Awesome User Groups and Meetups
Proposers & Note Takers: Eli (Netsquared) & Ed (Mifos)
Contents
Who's Here and What's Your Favorite Flavor of Events?[]
Name, location and favorite event format
- Hiro: organize meetups - 30 or 40 people coming together for technical semniars.
- Ward: organize events
- Nela (Kaltura)
- Ruthie (Drupal Association)
- Drupal Association Member from Denmark: User Meetups - Brewww - beer tasting and tech talks
- Jason (Drupal Portland lead) - Brewpal - meetup where people come together and work on and get questions answered.
- Meetups - traditional sales presentation format
- Site-building competition
- Meetings out west where people watch videos from past conferences and discuss.
- Neil
- B
ritta: jailbreaking ecosystem, yearly conference but no meetups
- Jeffry Taylor: European side of video blogger community --> Vlog Europe - head of events for be my app - favorite is live coding hackathons.
- Jeff Potts - Alfresco - run annual conferences and do in-person meetups, do office hours/hangouts on the air.
- Shelley (OCLC): no favorite event format
- Randall Ross (Ubuntu Vancouver) - favorite events are social events that exclude technology - no laptops allowed - will radiate :)
- Ferdinand- run ted-like conferences for developers, only a few per year. Would like to have Paris version of NY Tech Meetup - already have 500 signups/250 attendees.
- Likes meetups because deal with all type of tech.
- Sheri Dover: organize events to encourage entrepreneurship - alumni affairs for Portland Startup weekend, TIE Portland, Women Founders Forum
-
Do panels or informal meetups.
- Stefano: work at openstack, run two large events per year, biz conference and then gathering of developers to define roadmap for next six months like Ubuntu
- D
evelopers Summit - wide network of meeting groups.
- Favorite format - loose program with short presentations - lots of time for people to chat
- Asheesh: SF - unstructured nights i.e. python user groups
- Andrea: wordpress project - wordcamp - favorite is 20 minute presentation, ten minute qa, 10 minute break all day long
- Other Favorite Formats:
- Community-run user groups
- Daniel: go to a lot of user groupsBryan: go aot a lot of user groups
- Emily: Drupal - like where people summit sessions and vote on (un conference)
- Dave Nielsen (Hackathons)
- Molly: Speedgeeking - 10 minute presentations where rotate amongst groups - do it 4 times
- Barbara: Oakland - still figuring out favorite format
- Stephanie: likes hallway chat
- Jacob (Drupal): like crowdsourced, semi-structured online sessions
- Eric SF/Sacramento - unconference format
- Pernilla: graph cafe - do talks and people draw graphs on tables
- Erica (Moz): Mozcations - audience votes on where they're going from Milwauke to South Africa.
What We Want To Discuss[]
- How to get new users to interact
- At first conference, how do you get people to go to stuff - breaking the ice
- How do you engage with group members in between meetups?
- Are there resources for more creative ideas?
How do we maxmize engagement for attendees at first time events?[]
- Takeaways
:
- Engage with people in a personal way
- Make sure there's high commitment before the event and people feel welcomed.
- Randall and his process for Ubuntu meetups:
- Before event: High commitment: Use Meetup:Know who's coming and know what they want to explore before they arrive in-person (require real names on meetup.com)
- Have a minimal cost for event - OADI - occasional anonymous drop-in - have a hard time accommodating them because can be overwhelmed
- At event: door-welcoming committee that acknowledges them and thanks them for coming.
- Before event: High commitment: Use Meetup:Know who's coming and know what they want to explore before they arrive in-person (require real names on meetup.com)
- Have a hospitality team (silent invisible bouncers) - unidentified members of group that make sure each new person has a comfortable experience.
- Also identify people that are making others feel comfortable
- Bond people together who are very talkative with not too talkative
- Helps make people feel more at ease.
- Can circulate some documentation on they create these times.
- Dave: email before the event - outline what they offer to first-time attendees so people feel that they're very welcome, have a door greeters
- Forced engagement: at each table, have you present your problem and discuss what you want:
- Randall - some time introverts don't want the spotlight
- Daniel: Don't scare off people who want to just try stuff out: Low commitment at the start - Choosing between multiple formats when trying out a user group - hate meetup.com, doesn't like RSVP, getting email updates.
- Sheri: want a couple people who engage - who go out and interact with people and make sure nobody is left out.
- High Barriers to Entry (Force Commitment)
- LinuxFest NorthWest: Want to still keep it free but don't want it bogged down by freeloaders who are anonymous and don't want to participate
How do you get new event ideas?[]
Steal Ideas from other Events[]
- Go to a lot of events and steal ideas
- In portland look at Calagator.
- Asheesh: try to document this on openhatch domain - lists.openhatch.org/events
- Discussion List for newcomer-friendly events
- Creating an outreach cookbook that summarizes these event guidelines
- Eli: Organizers Handbook on wikispaces.com
Event Feedback[]
- Go to the live backchannel to get the real honest feedback about the event.
- Live on-screen behind presenter
- Following and summarizing hashtags from events
- Tools: rowfeeder (http://rowfeeder.com) - puts this into google spreadsheet for easier analysis.
- Make sure to set this up before hand.
Polls at events[]
- Randall: Best ideas come from group itself and polls
- Do post-event evaluation about what they liked, what they want to see, how to improve.
- Listen and qualify feedback to make sure its valid and valuable
- Eli: at-event surveys are better than post-event ones.
- Asheesh: Chips in a bowl at PyCon events - put chips in a poll if you like event.
- Pernilla: red, yello, or green objects.
- Tweetpoll - live results during events
- Portland Netsquared: back of nametag - have responses on what you did or didn't like - get a good overview sense of what people have to say aobut events.
- Jeff: Hold t-shirt (or any SWAG) hostage at the event to get surveys
- People will do anything for a free t-shirt or an owl sticker (hootsuite)
Internally in your Community[]
- Monthly Dinner with Meetup Organizers to brainstorm organizers
- Come up with sexy names - DrupalHagen instead of Drupal Camp Copenhagen.
- Eli: goes to his community and mailing list to get ideas
- While at the bar during live events, discussing what people do.
- (Take notes before you walk home so you don't forget the idea)
- Open-mic style events about failures
- http://failfaire.org/
- Experiment and Take Risks
- Dave/Pernilla: don't try to be perfect, don't be afraid to experiment and try new events
- When people put their energy into something you can see that and people respond and want to get involved.
Resources:[]
- Outreach Cookbook: http://lists.openhatch.org/events (Asheesh and OpenHatch)
- Organizers Handbook: http://organizershandbook.wikispaces.com/ (Eli and Netsquared)
- Rowfeeder (http://rowfeeder.com)
Best Practices on Food[]
- Pizza is cost-effective
- Erica: in Seattle - no pizza at meetups format.
- Things that stay warm
- Hummus
- Eli: no hummus rule - wants no hippies at events
- Open Source Bridge - asheesh - falafel, shawarma, vietnamese sandwiches
- Dave: Celeries, carrots, vegetables - only hungry people will eat them.
- Daniel: don't have beer if you don't have food
Ice Breakers[]
To know and interact with people in space[]
- Tables at each topic - encourage people to sit ones they're interested in
- Need to make sure there are topicless tables too.
- UnPanels - low investment
- One session with everybody at beginning
- Write down all the questions that people want to discuss
- Seek out experts knowledgable enough to answer questions - could then also rotate other people in.
- Now have questions and panelists
- 3 Words - introduce yourself with three words
- Did this at very first FooCamp
- Blank Badges that you fill up
- Rubber stamps
- Buttons with graphics and words -
- Newbie buttons on lanyards
- OSCON with ribbons to denote folks
- Social Bingo/Scavenger Hunt
- i.e. find someone where software t-shirt, find someone with certain badge
To Warm People Up and Get Moving[]
- Give people the wrong badge and have to find the person who's badge you've got.
- Or you give people a name to find
- Rock Paper Scissors
- Giant question balls
- Inflatable ball with a bunch of questions - throw it around the group - when you catch it wherever your right thumb lands you have to answer the question
- Assassins - have to go seek out new people at the conference and target them.
- Give people a list of little-known facts before the event - have to find the people who's facts they belong to.
- Value of a good MC and someone who can help the event flow and get people interacting - being kind and firm.
- Sunlight Labs: Prize for finding people with certain criteria