Setting up the London ExpressionEngine meetup
February 28th 2010
A few people have asked me how I went about setting up the ExpressionEngine meetup I’ve been running in London for the last few months. I didn’t quite know what to say at first because I felt like I just stumbled blindly into it. But as time goes on – we’ve just had our 4th meetup – and questions are starting to come up for me, I thought I’d share what I know and maybe gleen some answers from other meetup organisers out there about the areas I’m unsure about.
Gauging interest
This was easy. I asked a handful of people I knew via the ExpressionEngine forums and/or Twitter who are based in London and the South East if they’d be interested. They all said yes so I figured we were good to go.
Photo of everyone looking very serious at our 2nd meetup: (L-R of those facing camera) shapeshed, adamkhan, paulcuth, paulstone and long distance member MarmaladeToday who was visiting from the Welsh Marches.
Promotion and organisation
It occured to me that I should really be using ExpressionEngine to set up a website to promote the event, but I didn’t know if it was something that was actually going to last past one or two meetups. And I really didn’t have the time. So I took advantage of the ‘1st 3 months free’ offer on the Meetup.com website and setup a group on there. I figured being on there might also help in letting more people find out about the group – it’s a known Meetup directory and you can search by topic and by location.
I did hesitate about making people sign up to yet another website at first but it didn’t seem to put anyone off. It’s good to be able to see how much interest there is. I’m also finding it easier to remember people’s names when they turn up because I’ve seen the name (and possibly a profile pic) on the group and in the RSVP list.
Meetup.com also does a lot of the work for you. If I create a draft meetup event but don’t feel ready to publish it, it will email me to remind me I have a draft waiting. If I publish the event before I’ve decided where it is going to happen, it’ll remind me by email to add a location. And it automatically sends out reminders to the group members when the date is approaching.
I don’t want to turn this to sound like a big promotion for Meetup.com but I guess it taught me a lot about what is involved in organising a meetup. It has features like sign or name badges print outs – things I wouldn’t have thought of but which could be really useful.
Once I’d created the group/event page I still needed to get the word out. Obviously I’ll always share the link on Twitter. And you know how that can get the word around.
I also listed it on Upcoming.org (like a free Meetup.com) the first time (but haven’t bothered since). One of the members, Simon Cox, thought to post it on the EE forum too before I did, but now you can submit it to the official ExpressionEngine events listing and they’ll show it on their homepage.
Format
Partly as an ice-breaker and partly to give it structure I suggested that attendees might like to give a little show-n-tell about how they’ve used EE meet their needs. I had one in mind that I could give and it wasn’t long before Adam Khan volunteered too. And so our first meetup was set.
This format seems to work really well. We’ve had a theme for the last couple meetups – at our 3rd meetup we looked at ecommerce and the last one was add-ons – and I’m gathering ideas for future events on our group’s message board. Incidentally, Meetup.com have now introduced a new Ideas board especially for this. (See what I mean? They think of everything!)
Venue requirements
Given that I wanted people to be able to give presentations to the group, I needed to find somewhere we could have a quiet room to ourselves. It also needed to be close to a (relatively central) tube station, since people would be coming from all over London and beyond.
By happy coincidence, we had just finished building a website for a friend of a friend, Glyn, who’d just bought and refurbished a pub called The Bell near Liverpool Street station. The Bell has WIFI, beer, and an upstairs room that is available for hire, and he very generously offered it to me for free.
One thing to point out about having presentations, which always require a screen for slides or a demo: it is difficult for even just 8-10 to be all be able to see the screen of one laptop. If someone is showing slides then you can just about get away with having (the slides copied onto) 2 laptops split between a group of around 12, but for more people or if it is a live demo then you’ll need a bigger screen or projector.
One other requirement, that unfortunately our current venue doesn’t meet, is food. Our meetup happens in the evening so most people are coming straight from work and it would be really good if we could have some finger-food to munch on and keep us going. Instead we are currently surviving on beer and crisps 1, though on the one occasion a few of us indulged in a curry delivered from the restaurant opposite, it’d be more appropriate to be able to have some snacks available from the start.
Time and Cost
As I mentioned the venue isn’t costing me anything 2, but I am paying $72 per 6 month subscription to Meetup.com. It has also sucked up a fair bit of admin time so far. According to my Bubbletimer log I’ve spent 14 hours organising it to date. This has included tasks like:
- choosing and booking a venue
- setting up the group webpage/site
- arranging for presentations and/or writing the blurb for each meetup
- choosing a date (at one point I did a quick poll to see what dates suited people but I didn’t get many responses so now I just pick a date that I and the presentees can make and go for it. The more members you have, the less you have to worry about picking a date that noone can make.)
- trying to find PC/Mini Display Port to HDMI cables to plug people’s laptops into the big screen TV Glyn’s made available to us 3(N.B. This could be another cost you need to budget for – or an opportunity for sponsorship from an AV hire place)
- looking/appealing for sponsorship, then putting sponsorship received in place (uploading logos/links/blurbs)
- promoting event on Twitter and submitting to other listings
Although I’m getting a lot back in terms of what I learn at the events, it would be nice be able to cover my costs. Meetup.com has some optional functionality to help you with this: one is charging a subscription fee to members and the other is getting sponsorship.
I certainly don’t want to make members pay – I think they’re contributing enough by turning up and giving presentations. But I have considered sponsorship. Actually I got some sponsorship (at the last minute) from Brandon Kelly’s add-on shop for our Add-on-tastic meetup: we looked at Pixel & Tonic at the event and link to it from our page and I get a free Playa license in return.
But in the long run I have absolutely no idea how much a spot on our webpage/mention at our event is worth… our attendance varies from 9 to 21, we have 52 members and since I installed Google Analytics 2 weeks ago we’ve had 108 unique visits.
If anyone can give me some advice about the value of this kind of sponsorship – or other ways you’ve raised funds for a meetup – then please do share in the comments. Or if you fancy sponsoring it yourself, please use this form to get in touch.
Result
Well, I know I might be a bit biased, but I think the meetup has been a real success so far 
Apart from being super useful as an opportunity to see and learn from how other people are using ExpressionEngine, I also love just getting to talk shop with fellow web designer/developer/small business owners. Last week we got side-tracked into discussing everything from how we manage our client’s website hosting (reselling or dealing with their—so often—poor choices) to which text editor/ftp applications we use.
You don’t have to just take my word for it either. You can read what other members have to say about it here.
1. Yes I know we[Brits]‘ve survived on a diet of mostly this for hundreds of years but this isn’t a purely social event – you actually need to keep a hold of your braincells for some of the topics we’re discussing! ↩
2. Well, except maybe the odd bit of free design work/website maintenance for Glyn. ↩
3. I’m still working on this one. I left it to the last minute this time and could only find online shops which would’ve delivered too late. ↩
