How to organize a meetup?

Events are key for branding and recruitment, as we are able to introduce our company and our brand to the local community. The key to a good event is professional correspondence, consistency, and keeping it fun. We aim to keep our events welcoming to all levels of experience with Tech, not-self promoting, and high quality. The following shows a timeline for hosting an event and the basic processes you should be following.

Meetup Timeline

• 6-8 weeks before: Create your goals and think about your ROI, create your meetup page, and start contacting speakers.
• 4 weeks before have your speakers and venue confirmed
• 4 weeks before schedule, but don’t announce
• 2 weeks before announce on meetup and SNS
• 1 week before blog post and SNS promotion, email
• 2 days/day before reminder- continue promotion
• day of reminder & promotion
• day after post photographs and videos on meetup and upload to google drive, thank you to attendees, speakers and venue sent, follow up with your KPIs and Metrics, create meetup event page for your next event, and follow up on Social Media with your videos and photos

Organizing a meetup event

1. Research by attending other meetup events. See what you like/dislike about what the other groups are doing and take notes. Find what space in your community is lacking and make that your niche. Important for DC, Berlin and NYC where the communities are very active and there are a lot of nice meetups.
2. Create goals for your meetup and KPIs. What’s the purpose of your meetup? What’s Wiredcraft’s ROI? (Brand awareness, recruitment, newsletter or SNS subscribers?) What size do you want the meetup to be.
3. Know who the influencers/speakers are in your community and reach out to them to speak/suggestions for speakers. Create a backlog spreadsheet so you have all necessary information at your fingertips.
4. Find Sponsors/Venues. Make a list and email them so you can plan your meetups well in advance. Ideally you can plan your first two meetups before you even host the first one.
5. Meet with the venue. Important questions - what is there sound system/projector set up (will the speaker need a remote to reach their computer), expected capacity, how many chairs can they provide, area for drinks/food, is it ok to have beer at their venue, who will be responsible for the setup and takedown, are they willing to help sponsor food or anything else? Get their social media and logo for cross promotion. Get their contact number if people can’t find the venue.
6. Create your budget
7. Create your meetup on meetup.com. Make sure the purpose and schedule of your meetup is clear in your objective. Allow some time to gain members, about a month. You can schedule the meetup, but it’s not necessary to announce it yet.
8. Promote your event. Reach out to other partner groups to ask them to promote and support on Social media or at their events.