How to Start a Meetup

Manual

Manual
Created Tuesday 22 October 2013

There are many manuals, instructions, and guides on starting and maintaining meet-ups and user groups. This guide describes how we do it and why you should follow it when you want to start a meet-up of your own.

1. Peer
You will need a peer or peers, somone who will help you and who you will share your ideas with. Having a peer is vital and you should not start planning or going even further without them. 

Why
Why is it so important? Because you will not have the power to keep the meet-ups going. Trust me. Many tried and failed sooner or later. 

Peers will keep the ideas flowing and come up with them when you will not have the power.

Who
You will need peers who agree with you how you want to run the meet-ups. You can say outloud or even write a manifesto in which you specify the goals, the format, and all other details which are important to all of you.

How many
How many peers will you need? One is essential, two are even better, and I believe three or more are too many. Three people are probably the best number for sorting out arguments. It is important you share the same ideas and goals and having one is still better when you agree with them on most points than having two with who you are not completely in sync.


Place
Now that you have found co-organizers, it's time to start looking for a place where you will run meet-ups. See, having peers is already helping because now more people can look for it.

You will want a single location so that visitors will remember it and know what they are up against. Faimiliarity is good for speakers and even better for the first-time speakers.

Location

Food & drinks

Fee

Time

Promotion

Website

Speakers

Sponsors

Format

Now here's an annyoing fact that has been going on for quite a couple of years now. I have been going around and reading around about conferences where a certain group of women or a woman goes up to complain how we treat women like shit and we should do something about that and basically bring more women to programming/science. Well, I don't buy this because I have never had a problem with any woman in any position so I don't need to feel guilty. If you are having a concrete problem you come to me and I'll try to solve the problem for you and with you and that would be if you're a woman or a man or a beginner or any other part of any group.

I also have found these women have been radicalizing lately. I think that's because they have found we programmers are a weaker kind. We're not used to treating people and they have discovered we actually care about what they have to say and try to solve because, solving problems is a programmer's nature. I don't know what to say but I feel abused by these women. It really is not my problem to bring more kinds of those and those people to programming and I don't know why there should be more people of this and that kind in programming. We are welcoming more people of any kind and if you want to feel special because you're coming from a special group that's alright but I don't care and I'm not going to care.

Please stop abusing the welcoming nature of the club.