The Meetup Organizing Handbook

How you can successfully run your first community meetup

Over the last few months, I have come across dozens of people who have been attempting to take their first steps as community meetup organizers. This is something I celebrate because, to me, this implies that not only have people gotten accustomed to in-person communities once again but also that they’re taking actions to extend the good of communities to people beyond them.

However, while many of these folks have been attending meetups for a while now, not everyone has been exposed to how a meetup is organized. Since I’ve actively organized tech community meetups for over five years, I thought of this as the perfect forum to share, especially since we have already shared a hackathon organizing guide.

Therefore, in this newsletter, I will share my three-step process for organizing a community meetup.

Step 1: Review the prerequisites 📝

Before planning a community meetup, I ask myself three important questions. These questions form the core philosophy behind your community meetup.

• Why are you catering?

The first question we should ask ourselves is why we are organizing a meetup and what our purpose is. And we have to be honest with ourselves. If our purpose has anything to do with FOMO or the fact that others also organize meetups, we must stop right there. If there is a real and tangible gain for ourselves and our audience, we proceed to the next question.

• Who are you catering to?

The next question is who the meetup is catered to. This question defines the end goals, which could vary significantly based on the audience’s persona. Whether our audience includes college students, professional developers, startup founders, or any other persona, we must ensure that we create value for them.

• What are you catering?

Finally, once we understand our purpose and audience, we decide what kind of meetup experience we want to cater. This could include multiple lecture-style talks, learn-and-build workshops, wine-and-dine mixers (of course, the wine isn’t mandatory), or any other format we deem necessary. But we must ensure that we are clear about our experience before we start planning things out.

Step 2: Planning the meetup 🛠️

Once we are through with the prerequisites, it’s time to plan the meetup. For that, there are a few areas you must cover:

• Build a functioning organizing team

Ideally, for any meetup, we want a team of committed individuals with diverse skills, including logistics, marketing, and technical expertise. A mix of experience levels (low and high) is fine, but they must believe in the purpose. And keep the team lean; too many cooks really spoil the broth.

• Define an agenda

Next, we define an agenda based on the kind of event. For example, if we organize a conventional lecture-style meetup, our agenda should include the start and end times, key sessions, breaks, and networking opportunities. We also need to ensure that the session content is valuable and appropriate for the audience it is catered to. For this, we may also need to onboard speakers outside the organizing team.

• Secure a venue

The next big step is to secure an easily accessible venue with ample space, appropriate seating arrangements, and AV (Audio-Visual) facilities such as mics, projectors, screens, and speakers. The other big logistical challenge is ordering enough food and beverages. We need to order a substantial enough quantity of food while accommodating dietary restrictions (I default to vegetarian options for this reason). Based on the kind of event and audience, we can charge a per-person fee to cover food or onboard a sponsor(s).

• Onboard relevant sponsors

For various requirements, we may need to onboard sponsors to the event. Sponsorship is essentially sales, so the best way to capture a sponsor is by quantifying the potential impact you can generate for the prospective sponsor to showcase their potential ROI (Return On Investment). The easiest ways to impact a sponsor are by increasing their brand awareness, helping them discover talent to hire, or offering a testing and feedback loop for their products. Always ensure that the sponsor is relevant to the content of the event.

• Prepare the promotional designs and content

Once all our logistics are complete, we are ready to open our event. However, we also need promotional collateral (designs and copywriting) to ensure we can set up our registration form and market the event. Additionally, if you plan to offer attendees any swag, merchandise, or gifts, those must also be designed.

• Create a form for attendee registrations

Finally, we are ready to onboard attendees to the event. To make our lives easier, we can use an online platform like Luma, Eventbrite, or Meetup.com for attendee management. We can also create a custom registration form to collect attendee information. Ensure that any essential information for both organizers and sponsors is collected, including (but not limited to) names, email addresses, job titles, company names, social media profiles, and any specific interests or dietary requirements.

• Market the event

Marketing the event is the final step before the day of the event, but it really can make or break your meetup. We can use social media, collaborate with other communities, cross-post with our sponsors, and leverage word-of-mouth among our peer groups. Also, if you’re not charging people to attend, expect a churn rate (30-40% is standard, at least in cities like New Delhi and Bengaluru).

Step 3: Executing on D-Day 🪄

And just like that, with the hustle and bustle of all the preparation, we reach the day of the event. Now, in all honesty, there’s very little you can actually do at this point. So, instead of a set of tasks, I keep some guidelines to follow.

• Ensure a safe environment

Our meetups must always offer a safe environment for every stakeholder, whether they are participants, volunteers, organizers, or sponsors. A code of conduct can go a really long way to help here. A wonderful example is the Hack Code of Conduct.

• Expect everything to go wrong

The truth about meetups and events is that sometimes, shit happens! I’ve had 40 people turn up for an event with 150+ registrations, food delivery turn up 2 hours late, a speaker forget that they were supposed to join and happen to be in a different city, and countless other issues. And all of this can happen despite proper planning. So, ensure that there is always a backup plan.

• Pick up the trash

One piece of advice that I received when working as a Coach at Major League Hacking is that you are never too big to get your hands dirty. When it comes to our meetups, it’s imperative that we keep our egos aside and help get the job done (no matter how big or small it seems).

• Stay open to feedback

The truth about meetups is that no matter how experienced we might be, we all still make mistakes sometimes (my mess-ups still haunt me on some days). Always be willing to listen and learn from the people who are participating in the meetups. Sometimes, this yields the best advice and suggestions we can hope for.

• Keep breathing

There is no denying that running meetups is hard. They have many moving parts and unpredictable components, and they constantly induce panic and anxiety. The best thing we can do is stay calm and patient. Solve enough problems as they come, and we will survive and thrive.

Going forward 🛣️

That’s about it for my meetup organizing handbook. If this convinces you to organize your first meetup, I would love to hear more from you. Beyond that, I am more than happy to take suggestions and keep improving these thoughts and advice as I learn and mature as an organizer. Until then, I hope this guide will create some value for the readers.