Comment on http://www.meetup.com/Meetup-Leaders-of-the-Bay-Area/events/76594162/

organizer-meetups.txt

Re: http://www.meetup.com/Meetup-Leaders-of-the-Bay-Area/events/76594162/

I wanted to come to this event today, but unfortunately, I'm not going to be
able to make it. I live in the far South Bay, and I've got a very tight
deadline for my tech startup, and I'm trying to finish final preparations for
Burning Man next week. It may not sound like much, but I can't afford to burn
the four hours in travel time it would take to come up for this at this time;
maybe after September.... It sounds like you may be getting a little
frustrated with this meetup ("5) Is it time to give up altogether?"), so I
wanted to jot down some notes that might help.

For background, I organize "#lspe," the Bay Area Large-Scale Production
Engineering meetup: http://www.meetup.com/Meetup-Leaders-of-the-Bay-Area/events/76594162/ . This is a technical meetup for engineers interested in large-scale
web technology. We've got over 1300 members, and have about 150 attendees at
each of our monthly meetings. I've written a blog post on how I run the meetup:
https://www.bookofbrilliantthings.com/blog/how-to-run-a-successful-tech-meetup .

I'm watching another meetup similar to yours meet with even less success than
yours: see http://www.meetup.com/event-organizers/events/74069252/ and
http://www.meetup.com/event-organizers/events/76510262/ . Between that and some
of your comments in the event description, I have a few thoughts that might
help.

In this context, two points from my blog post are most significant.

(1) I belong to 151 meetups. There are a lot of technology, entrepreneur, and
hobby topics I follow. My time is extremely limited, so I'm very selective
about what I go to, to the point of being mercenary. I don't go if I don't see
a high probability that I can learn something specific or provide value to
someone else by sharing something specific. So, as I mentioned in the blog, I
never go to the "let's get together and socialize over beer/coffee/whatever"
meetups. I need a specific agenda to get me out, even if it's an unconference
style event. And that agenda needs to be about the topic at hand, not a hiking
tour. (Between my job, hobbies, and social circles in the tech, fire and maker
communities, I've got my hands full.)

(2) In your description, you mention that you "launched 'Melba' because we
currently do not have an active coalition for local organizers (including lead,
assistant, co- and event organizers) to come together face-to-face. I had
hoped that the group would provide opportunities to socialize, share
information, and collaborate."

So this begs the question: do we *need* a coalition of local meetup organizers?

Couple this with "1) What would you like to see happen with this group?"

I'm going to turn this around and ask you, what do *you* want to see happen
with this group?

I noted in my blog post that one of the most important learnings I had was that
it didn't help to try and guess at what my audience wanted, but rather that I
should realize that I am a member of my own audience, and I should just do what
I want to. This has payed off brilliantly, and the group continues to grow. I
choose topics and set the agenda according to my interests, and it turns out
this is what the rest of the (self-selected) group membership wants also.
(And btw, out of ~1300 members, I've only gotten about a dozen ideas for
meetup topics that fit the group. In the tech world, at least, members tend to
be a lousy source of ideas for what to do anyway.)

A little secret here is that I watched another meetup organizer run something
similar, and his strategy seemed to be to pick topics he wanted to know more
about for his own business, and it turned out that his membership wanted to
know the exact same things.

So, returning to the above: do we need a group of organizers? What do you want
to get out of this? Pure speculation: perhaps you thought creating a group of
organizers would be a good way to learn things you can use to run your meetup?
If it were me, I would schedule an event with a specific
topic. Here are some examples:
"Round Table: How do you use Social Media to promote your meetup events?"
"How do you grow your meetup membership?"
"How do you find speakers for your meetup events?"
"Tips for running an event"
"What other community resources or software do you use with your group?"
You have the seeds of a really good one there yourself: "How do I create
a virtual community? What software have people used? What works, and what
doesn't?"

I don't know what you're really after here, but that's the kind of thing that
would draw me. Are you interested in discussing those topics? If so, it's a
good bet that other meetup organizers would be as well. If not, what is it
you want to know? That's what you should have events about.