Meetup Kit
This is a guide document made for Ethereum Meetup organisers. It includes answers to questions about how to organise meetup.
About Meetup Kit
We as a community are still missing a lot, we need to understand that by meeting people in person we can create and form better relationships which will exclude growing communities more. This way we can grow the community around technology like Ethereum too. This meetup kit is supposed to be there for everyone who wants to organise a meetup but have very little to no experiences with organising tech meetup. You will find all kinds of important information in this meetup kit regarding meetup organising. It’s supposed to be like a hand book for anyone who wants to organise a meetup. This meetup kit includes tips from my personal experiences of organising meetups in a different locations, volunteering on events and conferences.
I hope that you will find this document helpful and it will help you organise the best meetup possible :) Good luck 🍀
Organising a successful event requires some effort. We've put together some guidelines to help you through this process.
Golden Rules
Be the catalyst and facilitator, not the featured speaker at every meeting (people will get tired of you if you do.)
Do your best to get people from outside the people who usually attend your meetings to present.
Include information about the speakers on your event page.
Shake up the format. Have presentations, panel discussions, roundtables, workshops, etc.
Set a consistent date, time, and location. Always have it there so people can get used to it.
If at all possible, never cancel a planned meetup or many people will lose faith in your ability and stop RSVPing to your events.
If you're struggling with low attendance make sure to host events on regular basis and record them
Make sure to stay in touch with your community - send follow up after the event with recording and possible materials
Before meet up
Check list
Plan before doing anything else
Think about the goal of the event - why would you like to organise it.
Think about the topic of the meetup.
Think about the speakers that are available to give a talk.
Throw yourself on a little meetup mind map session with a whiteboard or a bigger piece of paper.
Invite a friend to help out with your event, it’s always nice if you have someone who can help you out.
You may need help with finding a venue, ordering food, getting a speaker or finding a sponsor for the event. Of course, you can do it by yourself but it’s nice to have support and help.
When doing a mind map/ brainstorming think about what speakers are in your area that could come over and give a talk. People (and speakers) travel a lot so sometimes you may be lucky and get a good speaker for your event.
Pro tip: Be active on twitter - it may sound a little too much, yes, sometimes twitter is a waste of time for so many of you, I agree but it brings fruits. When you will ask on twitter, people will more likely retweet if you’re asking about speakers in your area which increase chances of getting a good speaker for your event.
Troubleshooting your Meetup
The main struggles that meetup organiser are facing & how to solve those & advices. This has been written in step-by-step kinda order so you can organise your Meetup by this list.
Pay attention to the audience
Do research about meetups in your area to get to know what kind of events are popular in your area and do meetup based on the attendees of the meetups. If your area is popular for coding meetups, do coding workshop or introduce the Ethereum programming languages.
Finding a speaker
When searching for a speaker, think about the topic of the event and try to find something that all speakers have in common - same topic ie DeFi / coding workshop / protocol changes/ language updates... It's easier to create a meet-up description if speakers will have a common topic, or talk to speakers and develop a nice timeline for the event with their talks. Recommendation is to have 2 but the best is 3 speakers at the event, every speaker would have 20-40mins for his talk, do short breaks between speakers. Leave the most important talk to be the last one, talk to speakers before the event, ask them about their slides, topics... to get a better picture of the meet-up itself.
Speaker list will be available soon.
If you need a speaker for the event, just reach out to Anett - she will help you find a speaker for your event :)
Attendance
Before getting a venue for the meetup, think about how many people will come over. Visit some tech events happening in your area so you will get a better picture of how many people are coming to those kinds of events. The amount of people will differ based on how big your city / town is, based on the topic and how interesting the description of the meetup will be. Keep those points in mind. But if your city is smaller, usually there will be around 5→15 people. If your city is bigger, it may be up to 70 people attending the event. All depends mainly on how big the city is, how interesting speakers are at the event, how interesting the event description will look like.
Getting a venue
For the venue, my recommendation is to look for a cowork space in your area. They’re usually happy to host community meet-ups. If you have a peer (friend) working in the cowork space, ask for a discount. Cowork spaces are usually hosting a lot of events that may be interesting for their community. They also have a lot of equipment like microphones, projector, whiteboard that will be useful for the meetup.
If there’s any cowork space in your area, look for a quieter coffee shop/ restaurant with a separate part for private occasions. Usually restaurants have places that have tables for reservations where you can do the meetup. Or ask University if they can let you have a meetup in class. At university or school there’s a high chance of doing the meetup, just ask the head of the university/ teacher if you can do it, they should be happy to collaborate especially if you will ask Tech related University/ school.
Worst case scenario, find an airbnb. No matter how crazy it may sound, some airbnb's have bigger, open space where you can host people for the meetup. Be creative :) Pro tip: always asks for break down the budget as you’re doing meetup for the community
Venue requirements
Ideal venue for the meetup has chairs for the audience and projector with screen. Microphone is another great feature of the venue, it’s great for bigger meetups (10+ people) so the audience will hear the speaker nicely. You should consider recording the event. You can use your phone to record the event, you don’t need professional equipment for this but the speaker should have a microphone so it will be better to hear the speaker on video. Whiteboard is optional, some speakers like to use it, some don’t. If the venue has a whiteboard, it’s good but usually you can run meetup without a whiteboard. It’s needed for workshops mainly. Sometimes venues do borrow recording tools like tripods, for your phone or they even can borrow you recording equipment. Nice is to ask if the venue provider can record the event for you, they may even do it for free.
Recording
Recording of the meetup is always a great idea and highly recommended to do. As there’s never enough learning resources and talks. Also a great way is to stream your meetup so people that couldn’t come to your meetup can watch it and ask questions after the talks remotely. Use platforms like Twitch, YouTube or Facebook to do so.
Tools
There is extra document with Tools for Organisers. Link - this document contains links on tools that will help you organise Meetup.
Platforms for Virtual Meetup are available in Virtual Event Platforms
Catering
It’s nice to have but not required. Catering is usually the biggest cost of the meetup itself but it will leave a good impression of the event itself when there’s some kind of snack. My recommendation is to order a pizza for the event or finger food. If you want to go for a cheaper option, buy some chips and popcorn for the event or make some sliced breads with topping, serve hummus with pita or cheese plate. Usually it cost around 150-200€ (in Europe) for pizza for the event - this is very individual and depending on your location. When deciding on how much food you need, keep in mind 2 slices of pizza per person.
If you don’t have food or pizza, beers works the best. You can also go for some non alcoholic drinks like coke or lemonade (water with lemons). It’s nice to have beers or lemonade if you want cheaper option. Bigger water barrels (glass containers) with a few slices of lemon and peppermint (optional) works too. Don't forget on glasses :) Drinks cost around 30-70€ (in Europe) depending on the amount and location (price of food in your country).
Pro typ: order food 1 or 2 days before the event, create a scheduled order in advance so you will not stress out during the event :)
Getting a sponsor for the meetup
It’s the hardest part of organising the meetup. You may want to skip it as sometimes it’s pain in the ass to get a sponsor. But you need to pay something for the venue and snacks. It’s always nice if you have connections in your area and you can get a venue for free, which you can, just ask your friends if they know someone from cowork space/ school/ university... or just a nice email to those institutions. Key thing in getting a sponsorship is giving back some value, usually what works is adding their logo to the event banner, mentioning them in event description, mentioning them in intro at the beginning of the event works well. Sometimes they would like to have a rollup style banner in front of the audience. Where to get sponsors for the meetup? Ask a speaker if their project is willing to pay some extra bucks for the catering - it usually works. Create a sponsorship deck and pitch to tech companies in your city or online companies that you would like to represent their company at the event. It’s hard! But you can do it. Do research about what companies are in your area that may be interested in to sponsor your events if you want to organise more meetups.
Pro typ: be nice and engage sponsors into your event - let them say hi to the audience, do QA session with them at the end of the talks
Announcing the meetup
Announce, share the meetup to the meetup group at least 10 days before the event itself. Usually what works the best is announcing the meetup 2 weeks before it will happen so the audience will have more time to get ready for it and will notice this event. Post meetup to your meetup group, share it with your friends, to facebook groups in your area, make sure to post it on twitter and tag speakers and share it to telegram groups. You can send out emails via meetup.com to all members of your meetup group, make sure to send a warm invite to the members of the group for your meetup right after you will announce it and the day before the meetup itself as a reminder.
Pro typ: be loud but nice
Communicate
Keep in touch with speakers, venue before the event so you can announce any changes in advance! Once you will lose trust, everything will be ruined. If at all possible, never cancel a planned meetup. Many people - attendees will lose faith in your ability and stop RSVPing to your events.
Shill your meetup
A lot of cities have their own Telegram or Facebook group - share your meetup to those. If you been on a conference, they usually have Telegram group - don't be shy and use it for shilling your meetup. Those groups have a lot of members and there is pretty high chance that someone is near by and will show up on your meetup. Share it on Twitter and make sure to tag speakers and sponsors. Share your event to facebook groups or use any other social media that’s popular in your area You can even invite your friends and family to the meetup.
The day before meetup:
Share meetup
Send out an email about your meetup to the mailing list - meetup.com has a mailing list where you can send reminders to people in your group, mailing list, friends...
Check
Send a message to the venue and ask them if everything is fine, ask them if you should come in advance to get a ready venue for the event. Ask the speaker if everything is fine for the meetup, if he has slides ready, if he feels good. Get food for the meetup, get drinks, create a scheduled order for pizza... If you’re going to use your phone for recording, charge your phone, get ready a recording device - charge batteries…
Get ready your Welcome Speech
Keep in mind that you will moderate the event. If not you, then get a friend who will moderate the event. It's best if you are moderating the event, I know, it takes time to get used to taking on a mic and around people (first strangers, later your friends).
At the beginning:
Welcome everyone
Tell the agenda of the event
Thank sponsors of the event
Between speakers:
Announce speaker
Moderate Q&A,
Announce breaks
At the end of the event:
Thank everyone for coming over
Tell announcements (when the next event will be)
Tell where you will post recording and when
Tell coordinating informations - if attendees can stay and network at the venue or give recommendations of the bars nearby where people can go and continue hanging out after the event :)
Checklist
Pro typ: Enjoy your meetup, I know, it sounds not easy but you can enjoy it even though there are so many things you have to keep in mind. The more meetups you will do, the more automated process it will be :)
After the meetup:
Feedback
It's important to reflect after the meetup. Write down things that you learn, things that didn’t work, things that you would like to change next time. Take your time and reflect the meetup afterwards. It doesn't really matter if you sit down right after the meetup or next day with someone from your team and chat about what went well, what didn't, what would you change next time… Make sure to write those thoughts down as a lesson learned. It takes time to be a skilled organiser. Time and continuity are the best teachers :)
The ideal meetup
To illustrate one of the scenarios how a growing ecosystem thanks to meetups works. This is the ideal situation of what's happening at the meet-up, after the meetup and later. Meet-ups can execute into a snowball effect of a growing ecosystem.
At the meet-up
Attendee's of the meet-up are coming to the meet-up for a reason. The reasons why people are coming to the meet-ups are:
to get knowledge
to get inspiration (for a project)
to make new like minded friends
to get contacts (to help them with their project)
Those are usually the main reasons why people are attending meet-ups. They're the key reasons why it's important to host meet-ups and grow the Ethereum ecosystem.
After the meet-up
It's up to everyone how much they want to get from meet-up. The ones who wants to gain from the meet-up the most will usually do following:
extra self learn
start building the project
At the meet-ups, speakers usually provide extra study materials. Which are great for those who want to know more about the topic. Then people can self learn which can execute to an article inspired by the meet-up. Or it can execute to find like minded friends and start working on a project. This can execute into new projects in the ecosystem, which usually attract new users into the ecosystem. yay snowball effect
Later
If attendee's of the meetup will build a project, they can present it at the local meet-ups. Get local users then go big and present at the bigger events - conferences. *another snowball effect *
It's super important to keep this meetup wheel rolling getting more users into the Ethereum ecosystem.
Meetup organisers are tremendously important. They're responsible for building the local community, which executes in having more users of Ethereum. Learning, spreading the world, keeping the knowledge spreading is super important. Especially if we want to live in the decentralised future and use web3 tech on a daily basis, outside of the "Ethereum bubble".
Wish you the best of luck with your meetup! 🍀
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