Do you have recommendations for which places to market your event? I run Handmade Meetups [0], which are gatherings for low-level programmers usually at coffee shops.
We put on good events reliably at the same date and time. However, aside from a mailing list and word of mouth we don't know how to advertise better to widen reach.
I also promote the events in local slack channels and on linkedin and twitter. Over the years we've built a newsletter and web presence and all that, but for discovery meetup is still king, though eventbrite and other places are okay.
The process here is to hype the event on multiple channels (Twitter, FB, IG, LI, etc) and measure which ones pop (eg: I track metrics across like 12 networks). Then lean in to the ones that have the engagement. Measure natural posts and compare to "boosted" as well.
This sounds suspiciously like real work. I can't bear to simply read social networks any longer, much less actively engage with them or track statistics.
Data Viz DC is local to DC (with the occasional online event)[0] There are a lot of global meetup groups that are often affiliated with the Data Visualization Society or on meetup in your area.
> I’ll also generally mention that there’s a small group heading to a local brewery or restaurant after the meetup if folks want to stick around for that. I do this without knowing at all if there is a small group.
I downvoted because you already had downvotes (add to the pile!)
but I believe it's for the last line, which reads as cold and dismissive. It's easy to throw shade without adding anything of your own to the conversation, and people are alert to anything that edges in that direction.
I like that this guy moves his meetups around. In my area, most of the meetups happen downtown, often around rush hour, making it very difficult for anyone outside of that area to attend.
But yeah, I move around for the sake of exploring and seeing new places, not for convenience. I could, however, see meetups in other cities benefitting from that strategy.
I love the idea of a meetup moving around. Some meetups near me are on the other side of the metro which is a traffic nightmare to get to at rush hour, especially with a young kid whose schedule I also have to account for. If every other meeting was on my side of the county, I could at least attend some of them.
I live (well) outside a bigger city with worse traffic and I've become very selective about going into the city for evening events. Traffic/parking have become really bad and commuter rail just isn't a practical option for a nighttime event. And, on the other hand, people who live in the city are often reluctant to hop in a car (if they have one) and go out to the suburbs.
For anyone organizing meetups: listen to asciimov on this one! It's so stressful to park in a city (especially if it's not something you do every day and you don't know the right places/garages/open back-streets/etc.)
I'm one of the people helping to run Michigan TypeScript (we meet in person monthly in addition to doing the YouTube channel) and I also ran a React meetup in Detroit in 2016-2018. This article has lots of great stuff in it! I especially liked the parts about knowing your reasons for organizing a meetup.
There is one thing that I was expecting the article to cover, though, that it didn't: finding speakers. From talking to other organizers around the country, this seems like something that's a consistent point of stress. I think with MiTS we've found a good system, since only one month out of last year did we actually have to really "look" for a speaker, which is really great, but also not something that you can always expect to continue.
So on that note, if others have ideas to share on this topic, I'd really love to hear your thoughts.
I touch on this a bit in the post, but here’s about what I do for speakers:
1. Pay close attention to intros channel in the Cleveland area Slack channel and cherry pick the individuals who are doing cool work. We get a lot of boomerang thirty-something remote workers moving back to Cleveland to be closer to family. Giving a talk is a great way for them to reestablish themselves and meet folks in the area.
2. Straight up cold-contact interesting businesses and ask if they have any interest in participating. Surprisingly high success rate on this one, but it does work. Companies like to brag about what makes them special, I just happen to choose the ones that I really do find to be unique.
If those don’t work, I’d rather host a general social with no speaker than force a bad topic or always host repeat speaker appearances.
re: cold-contacting... any pointers on actually finding those businesses? I'm assuming Michigan and Ohio are roughly similar in this case, but man... so many people have left the state it's feeling kinda sparse some days not gonna lie. We used to have a JavaScript meetup in Ann Arbor that could consistently get 80-100 people (or more!), but many many many of those people have simply left. And so have the employers along with them. Not trying to be a downer, haha, but that really does seem to be the situation. We're trying our best to help things go in a more positive direction, but it feels like a chicken-and-egg sometimes. If it weren't for the YouTube channel's successes (which we're very grateful for), it would be a lot more painful.
Anecdotally, people do like getting together with others IRL, but it feels like it's a bit more selective and between YouTube and virtual events, I see people opting out of things that take a non-trivial drive for a short in-person event.
I've been running my local ruby meetup for about 6 years now. It was pretty stressful to begin with, trying to get people to give presentations, or thinking of one myself.
Then maybe 4 years ago I had the idea of threatening to shut the meetup down unless we managed to get 11 people to sign up to do a presentation once a year. This basically meant we had an entire year's worth of talks sorted by January.
We've been doing this every year now for the last 4 years, and it's working really well. It's not _my_ ruby meetup, it's the community meetup, I'm just helping facilitate it :)
Ran a couple of groups in the Houston area. Houston, while huge, isn't much of a tech hub, though there's plenty of technology used across all stacks. (though .NET and the like tends to be bigger, as oil/gas and health care are some of the largest industries here) Houston is very spread out as well, with pretty terrible traffic. As a result, there aren't many consolidated areas to hold tech meetups that appeal to a wide audience, and it can get frustrated setting up meetups to have only 6-8 people show up.
Been running a tech group in East Lansing for twenty plus years. Also started and helped run the Code Michigan hackathon with the state of Michigan for three years. All this resonates with me, a lot of it I learned the hard way. Surprised no one has written a book.
Meeting location is quite important, moved my group around the Lansing area and learned I got way more attendance meeting on the MSU campus, even though relatively few students have ever attended. I've seen other groups fail because they chose a poor location and never moved.
> Without fail, for free events, there’s a predictable dropoff of around 30% of all RSVPs. If I have 50 people RSVP for an event, I’ll assume 30 or 35 will show up.
I've seen a similar pattern with board game groups. At 50+, maybe the community is large enough to be self-sustaining, but for smaller groups, a random dip below average can snowball.
Obviously there's a broad spectrum of reasons for no-shows but I wonder if there's a way to solicit information on causes.
I've been running my infrastructure meetup for almost 9 years, and it was fun to see so many similarity of lessons, as well as drop off nrs which match my experience exactly.
My advice is to keep your meetup at max 40. I've done 20 and 130 and once it goes above 40 it starts to become a chore instead of something fun.
My other advice is not to overdo it. Focus on good speakers and the rest will follow. Unlike the guy in the article, I have new sponsors every time and rotate the venue every time to try and diversify the attendees. Over time it seems like a nice, core group will form, which will slowly grow with new people discovering and liking the format and content.
I had been running an Astronomy society weekly meeting for 3 years, probably the job with the most work on the committee.
Being so close to London there were a number of amazing speakers from various universities who were generous with their time. There were some professional speakers.
A proportion of the talks were done by members, it was good, it helps to have a passion and an interest in a subject, it also helps that my interests were aligned with the society.
However after three years I started to run out of ideas, and got a bit too burnt out, and I've not been back in the past few years.
One more thing: when you share the Wi-Fi password, INCLUDE A QR CODE. It boggles my mind that more people don't know about Wi-Fi QR codes. On most phones ~2018 and newer, you just scan them and they instantly connect you to the Wi-Fi network, no typing necessary. My fiancée and I love hosting, and guests love our guest Wi-Fi.
datadrivenangel | 2 years ago
1. Consistently put on actually good events!
2. Be consistent about marketing the events to make it easy for people to find them!
abnercoimbre | 2 years ago
We put on good events reliably at the same date and time. However, aside from a mailing list and word of mouth we don't know how to advertise better to widen reach.
[0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups
datadrivenangel | 2 years ago
I also promote the events in local slack channels and on linkedin and twitter. Over the years we've built a newsletter and web presence and all that, but for discovery meetup is still king, though eventbrite and other places are okay.
djbusby | 2 years ago
macintux | 2 years ago
datadrivenangel | 2 years ago
a123b456c | 2 years ago
macintux | 2 years ago
RMPR | 2 years ago
pininja | 2 years ago
datadrivenangel | 2 years ago
[0] -https://www.meetup.com/Data-Visualization-DC/
mmkos | 2 years ago
1. Make a good thing
2. Market it
Which the OP does very well, and has done with this post on HN which will no doubt boost his meetup even more.
rambambram | 2 years ago
willsmith72 | 2 years ago
This is a classic but a goodie
teeray | 2 years ago
“Hey, nice to meet you… what kinds of things are you working on?”
“Oh, I’m using X framework / library doing Y on this project, etc.”
“That sounds like awesome material for a talk, have you ever considered giving one?”
alberth | 2 years ago
This is just good overall advice for running any kind of event.
Nothing about this is specific to tech.
EDIT: why the downvotes?
sdwr | 2 years ago
but I believe it's for the last line, which reads as cold and dismissive. It's easy to throw shade without adding anything of your own to the conversation, and people are alert to anything that edges in that direction.
MBCook | 2 years ago
If it was changed to something like this instead I don’t think you would’ve had an issue because it becomes clear it’s not meant as a complaint.
“Nothing about this is specific to tech. These tips would also be great for a [photograpy] meetup or a [other topic] one too.”
asciimov | 2 years ago
Animats | 2 years ago
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Cleveland/comments/10dgg29/what_is_...
davekiss | 2 years ago
But yeah, I move around for the sake of exploring and seeing new places, not for convenience. I could, however, see meetups in other cities benefitting from that strategy.
nunez | 2 years ago
djbusby | 2 years ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Rocks
sylens | 2 years ago
kevinqi | 2 years ago
ghaff | 2 years ago
popularonion | 2 years ago
dimitropoulos | 2 years ago
dimitropoulos | 2 years ago
There is one thing that I was expecting the article to cover, though, that it didn't: finding speakers. From talking to other organizers around the country, this seems like something that's a consistent point of stress. I think with MiTS we've found a good system, since only one month out of last year did we actually have to really "look" for a speaker, which is really great, but also not something that you can always expect to continue.
So on that note, if others have ideas to share on this topic, I'd really love to hear your thoughts.
davekiss | 2 years ago
1. Pay close attention to intros channel in the Cleveland area Slack channel and cherry pick the individuals who are doing cool work. We get a lot of boomerang thirty-something remote workers moving back to Cleveland to be closer to family. Giving a talk is a great way for them to reestablish themselves and meet folks in the area.
2. Straight up cold-contact interesting businesses and ask if they have any interest in participating. Surprisingly high success rate on this one, but it does work. Companies like to brag about what makes them special, I just happen to choose the ones that I really do find to be unique.
If those don’t work, I’d rather host a general social with no speaker than force a bad topic or always host repeat speaker appearances.
dimitropoulos | 2 years ago
re: cold-contacting... any pointers on actually finding those businesses? I'm assuming Michigan and Ohio are roughly similar in this case, but man... so many people have left the state it's feeling kinda sparse some days not gonna lie. We used to have a JavaScript meetup in Ann Arbor that could consistently get 80-100 people (or more!), but many many many of those people have simply left. And so have the employers along with them. Not trying to be a downer, haha, but that really does seem to be the situation. We're trying our best to help things go in a more positive direction, but it feels like a chicken-and-egg sometimes. If it weren't for the YouTube channel's successes (which we're very grateful for), it would be a lot more painful.
davekiss | 2 years ago
The group I run is agnostic to specific tech or languages which makes it a bit easier to go broad in my hunt for the right stories.
ghaff | 2 years ago
patrickdavey | 2 years ago
Then maybe 4 years ago I had the idea of threatening to shut the meetup down unless we managed to get 11 people to sign up to do a presentation once a year. This basically meant we had an entire year's worth of talks sorted by January.
We've been doing this every year now for the last 4 years, and it's working really well. It's not _my_ ruby meetup, it's the community meetup, I'm just helping facilitate it :)
stavros | 2 years ago
bdcravens | 2 years ago
rmason | 2 years ago
Meeting location is quite important, moved my group around the Lansing area and learned I got way more attendance meeting on the MSU campus, even though relatively few students have ever attended. I've seen other groups fail because they chose a poor location and never moved.
zubairq | 2 years ago
jldugger | 2 years ago
I've seen a similar pattern with board game groups. At 50+, maybe the community is large enough to be self-sustaining, but for smaller groups, a random dip below average can snowball.
Obviously there's a broad spectrum of reasons for no-shows but I wonder if there's a way to solicit information on causes.
abc123abc123 | 2 years ago
My advice is to keep your meetup at max 40. I've done 20 and 130 and once it goes above 40 it starts to become a chore instead of something fun.
My other advice is not to overdo it. Focus on good speakers and the rest will follow. Unlike the guy in the article, I have new sponsors every time and rotate the venue every time to try and diversify the attendees. Over time it seems like a nice, core group will form, which will slowly grow with new people discovering and liking the format and content.
rjmill | 2 years ago
Do you rotate on a fixed schedule? Or based on venue availability?
zeristor | 2 years ago
Being so close to London there were a number of amazing speakers from various universities who were generous with their time. There were some professional speakers.
A proportion of the talks were done by members, it was good, it helps to have a passion and an interest in a subject, it also helps that my interests were aligned with the society.
However after three years I started to run out of ideas, and got a bit too burnt out, and I've not been back in the past few years.
en3r0 | 2 years ago
ryukoposting | 2 years ago