Outreach: Meetups

Starting Your Meetup

A reminder: Ansible Inc. can help you get your meetup off the ground. The guidelines are available on the Ansible web site here.

Running a Meetup

Social Media

• Twitter
  • Create a Twitter handle for the group (#ansible-LOCATION)
  • Replace the default Twitter icon immediately, with a relevant icon
  • Put the group’s meetup URL on the group’s Twitter handle
  • Put the group’s Twitter handle on the group’s meetup page
  • Add the Twitter handle of person organizing the group’s twitter handle and visa-versa
  • Request sponsorship or co-sponsorship on Twitter and via meetup group email
  • Request presentations or co-presentations on Twitter and via meetup group email
  • Announce sponsorship on Twitter and via meetup group email
  • Announce the scheduling of specific meetups on twitter and email
  • Try to always use appropriate hashtags for your region, such as #dc and #dctech
    • QUESTION: How do you find these?
• LinkedIn
  • Consider doing the same on LinkedIn
• Use http://hootsuite.com/ (or an equivalent) to manage the group’s Twitter handle and LinkedIn page.
  • QUESTION: Is there a free equivalent?
• YouTube
  • If you have the ability to record (even audio) then create a YouTube brand account
  • Split talks into individual YouTube videos: ffmpeg -i 12_October_2017.mov -c copy -ss 00:55:20 -t 00:09:24 checklists.mov
  • In the comments link to slides and your Meetup

Meetings

• Ask for help, but be specific with what you need. If co-organizers don’t help for a ~3 months remove them as co-organizers.
• Schedule meetups weeks in advance.
• Don’t wait to have a sponsor to schedule meetups. It’s easier to cancel but not to create.
• You can have presentations and still seek sponsors.
• Announce meetup via Twitter and email and always use appropriate hashtags
• Announce meetup periodically as you get closer to the event. Don’t over do it though
• Ask, via Twitter and email, for a sponsor and presentations for the meetup
• Always thank your sponsors on Twitter, using their Twitter handle(s), and email, don't forget to include your venue.
• Always thank the presenters on Twitter, using their Twitter handle(s), and email
• Arrive early to your event and setup the environment

Increasing attendance

• Meetup Group Tools allows you to message people that have not RSVP'ed. You may wish to do this a week before.
  • Include the agenda as text in the email
  • Be careful not to spam people
• The event limit can be higher than the event space to allow for no-shows
  • Track actual attendance over time
• Day before: Email RSVP:Yes saying you are looking forward to seeing them, include directions and timings
• Morning off: Email RSVP:Yes saying you are looking forward to seeing them, include directions and timings
• During the run up of the event tweet titles of talks, @presente, #ansible #devops-$location #ansible-$location
• QUESTION: What else?

The meetup

• Have intro slides playing that show agenda, upcoming events and requests for future sponsorship and presentations
• Ask attendees to tweet using a specific #hashtag
• Encourage attendees to take pictures or videos and post them on twitter and on you group’s meetup.com page
• Sponsors should pay for the venue, food & drinks.
• Have food and drinks delivered. You won’t have time to do this yourself.
• Sponsors can send money via paypal, checks or direct deposits
• Where possible avoid spending your own money
• Ask for co-sponsors and co-presenters
• Video tape or live stream the meeting using something like this on Live Youtube using Hangouts on Air
  • Live streaming uses a lot of bandwidth and participants may want to interact with the presenters.
  • Recording is easier logistically
• Ask attendees to survey your group
• Ask presenters to become members of your group and to RSVP to the event
• Assuming you have the sponsor’s and presenter’s email addresses, ask them to tweet the event and to retweet and favorite the meetup event

After Meetup

• Follow up to mailing list
  • Thank those that attended
  • Link to YouTube Channel & slides
  • Looking for talks/sponsors for next meetup

Thanks to Haisam Ido (Google doc, thanks to Haisam Ido for the help).

Some Other Tips

Some tips to getting off the ground:

Small: create an event "chat about Ansible" and locate it at a coffeeshop or library or someplace like that. Cap attendance at 10, just in case you accidentally overrun the place. No agenda, just hang out and share Ansible stories. If you end up with a waiting list, that's a sign to move up to medium.

Medium: find a place with a projector and do a simple talk, like "Ansible 101" (it's on our plate to put together a standard deck for this.) Can be pretty much any company's office, and you can solicit on the group: "hey members, can anyone host this?" Look for someone to sponsor pizza/snacks/drinks, and if you can't find anyone, we're happy to cover it. Cap attendance at 50, and if that ends up with a waiting list, move to large.

Large: solicit actively for multiple co-organizers and multiple sponsors. Solicit membership for content on a regular basis. Consider dividing tasks between organizers.