Make your meetups more sustainable¶
Sometimes our Write the Docs meetup organizers launch a successful meetup, only to find they struggle to sustain their meetup in the long-term. The hardest part in sustaining a meetup is organizing the events – especially as many organizers are also juggling a full-time job, families, and other important commitments.
Follow these principles to increase the chances that your meetup stands the test of time.
Minimal Viable Meetup checklist¶
- Host a maximum of ten meetups per year. You can skip August and December, since most people are on vacation at that time, or taking a break from their usual activities.
- Regular meetups help people plan their commitments. Host your meetup at the same time every month – eg the first Wednesday, or another specific date.
- Try to host your meetup in a regular event space to minimize the need to spend time finding new spaces.
- If you can’t find a local speaker for each meetup, consider screening a popular talk from one of our past Write the Docs conferences and inviting the conference presenter to call in for a live Q & A session.
- Alternatively, consider hosting a regular informal ‘docs and drinks’ to keep the momentum going with your attendees – these can involve either alcohol or coffee.
- Bring in at least two main organizers for your meetup (including yourself). This helps shoulder the burden of organizing and stops you burning out.
- Check your scheduling won’t clash with an overlapping meetup that might attract away your attendees.
- Even if you haven’t had a meetup in a while, just pick yourself back up and schedule another one when you can.
Nice-to-haves¶
- You can set up a twitter account for your meetup to help you promote it and engage attendees.
- Promote your meetup at other related events. Send out reminders for your events through meetup, or over Twitter if you can.
- Create a dedicated website to share information about your meetup.
- Find the potential helpers in your group and make them volunteers. Give them jobs to do – eg welcoming attendees or fielding questions.
- Partner with other parallel meetups to share resources – eg meetups just outside of your geographical area. You can also partner with crossover meetups in industry areas such as APIs, Agile, Programming languages, UI, Content Strategy or QA.
