Teach Yourself Beginning Community in 24 Months

Hello. Um, I call I d'oh site called you Castaic. Where are you going? I've interviewed about 100 people. Uh, and when we get in, they're going to see that it's really about amateur. It's This is amateur hour. This is we're gonna get together and have some fun. So I'm already gonna assume that everybody's everybody's familiar with user groups, right? Everybody's been to or we'll raise your hand if you've ever been to a user group. All right, great. So everybody knows. And I'm just kind of kind of assume that we're talking about the standard format of a of a monthly meeting that, uh, goes on for, uh, one meeting a month. So why'd you start a user group on? I didn't say how to start a user group, because that's that's gonna be an easy question. We're going to go over and about five minutes. But the reason you'd why you'd want to start shooting at the organizer's perspective and one of things until you've actually had to get up and run a user group. You're not gonna really understand what it's like and and what's goes into running a conference and what you can learn what? What's really going on in a in a session. So So, yeah, so starting is a group in five easy steps. Uh, the trick isn't the steps of themselves, but that you're gonna keep doing them. The steps are very easy to just pick a topic. Whatever your passion, about whatever you like. If you're if you're wanna learn closure started. Closure group. If you want Teo, uh, learn Ruby started Ruby Group. If you're in an area that doesn't have andI thing going on, just whatever you like, find the place. It doesn't have to be really fancy. You don't have to have a table excited to sponsor you. Library. I did my first choose a group meeting in a library, and it didn't work because they won't let me use the projector because I would break it. Uh, someone So Panero Panera had a projector, but it just didn't work. But the point was, is it it didn't matter where. It just matters that we met some place pick a schedule. This one's the tricky one. Because we're talking about feedback, writer. But you want to be able to do something that you, Khun regularly do you want to pick a schedule that it's going to be, um, something that people could be aware of and planned for, and then tell people do things like make stickers, make websites, make a Twitter account, make a Facebook page where a T shirt with your logo on it, uh, make stickers to give people tell people until they're tired of hearing about it because eventually maybe they'll give up and go. Go. Uh, sow, this is the hard one. This is the repeat 24 times to be sure. Well, I guess that it's it's very easy to do. Those 1st 4 things when it gets hard is when you have to do it month after month or you're sitting in a meeting because nobody showed up because you've scheduled it on the night game of thrones Was was going to do murdering everybody. It's okay to quit. Uh, I said give 24 months, you'll give it some time, but if it doesn't work for you, quit. But because you've given a time you're going, you're gonna make friends. You're gonna learn what, uh, what what is going on in and and and who you can trust? so you can turn the group over to somebody. Meetup dot com. I'm gonna point this out because we're not here to show what great hackers we are by. We're going to create the greatest blogged that's going to show off all of our greats events. Just just suck it up. Go to meet up that calm open account 6 60 bucks a year. People will be able to find you. Now, here's where you start to learn. You're gonna have to pay attention to your meetings, and it doesn't just mean listen to the speaker talk. It also means on I'm glad there's a slide here that can read that one. Uh, it means that the emcee is you, that you are the person you're the master of ceremonies who's going to be getting up and making sure people are having a good too time are learning that the speaker is comfortable, that they have all of their stuff set up, and that's when people are sitting are awkwardly not asking questions. You're going to be that the just, er that the speaker you're going to be flavor flavor, letting people have a good time, so you want to look at your attendees and I didn't say Look at the speaker first. It's a look atyour attendings. Look at how how there interacting. How are they having fun? Are they talking to people? Are they? Are they talking to each other? Break up those conversations that people are isolated. Go on, sit down and talk next somebody and then look at your speakers, see how they're doing. Are they uncomfortable? Are they trying to read slides and then totally getting lost? Because they flipped him the wrong way? That's a that's opportunity, Tio. Go in and say, Hey, you know, let's let's bring up the ice. Takes some of the pressure off with Speaker S O. That way they can be comfortable and teach So and then look at your town is looking at your speakers. Now you've looked at what? How people are are interacting and how speakers are able to do their thing. Make sure that there's communication going between them, that if there's a ah law or if there's it seems like the audience is disconnected. Hey, bring up the naive question and then get feedback. You want to be a ble in this kind of goes into what Mike Bushes ask people what they didn't like about the conference. Did they like the pizza? Do they like the topic? And also pay attention to the other more subtle feedback of, uh, did everybody showed up to a job? A script meeting, but they didn't show up to the closure meeting may be doing more job script meetings. S o U tastic is where I interview people like 100 people that, uh, our tech community leaders Conference organizer's User group fost all that stuff. Please come to the site. Look at it. Tell me how Thea how bad I'm doing Uh And then if you are someone who makes a false project runs user group Personally, I'd love to interview you. Or if you haven't just an interesting perspective on technical community, hit me up, Mike, you tastic dot com and again just to remember, it's amateur hour. We're all having fun. You don't have to be a super organizer to run a user group. Just give it time. Thanks