Teach Yourself Beginning Community in 24 Months

Hello. I’m Mike Hall. I do a site called UGtastic, where I’ve interviewed about 100 people in the tech community. When you get into it, you’re going to see it’s really about amateur hour. We’re going to get together and have some fun.

I’m going to assume everyone here is familiar with user groups. Raise your hand if you’ve been to one. Great. Let’s assume the standard monthly meeting format.

Today isn’t just “how to start a user group.” That’s the easy part and we can cover it in five minutes. The real point is why you’d want to start one, and what you learn as an organizer. Until you’ve gotten up and run a user group, you don’t really understand what goes into it or what’s really going on in a session.

Starting a group is five easy steps. The trick isn’t the steps themselves, it’s that you keep doing them.

Step one: pick a topic. Whatever you’re passionate about. Want to learn Clojure? Start a Clojure group. Want to learn Ruby? Start a Ruby group. If your area doesn’t have anything going on, just pick what you like.

Step two: find a place. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to have a big sponsor. I did my first user group in a library and it didn’t work because they wouldn’t let me use a projector. Panera had one, but it didn’t work. The point is the place doesn’t matter as much as meeting somewhere.

Step three: pick a schedule. This one is tricky because it needs to be something you can do consistently and that people can plan around.

Step four: tell people. Make stickers, make a website, make a Twitter account, make a Facebook page, wear a shirt with your logo. Tell people until they’re tired of hearing about it.

Step five: repeat it 24 times. This is the hard part. The first four things are easy. It gets hard when you have to do it month after month, or when you’re sitting in a meeting because nobody showed up and you scheduled it on the night a big TV show was on. It’s okay to quit, but give it 24 months. If it doesn’t work for you, quit. But if you give it time, you’ll make friends, learn what’s going on, and learn who you can trust so you can eventually turn the group over.

And yes, just use Meetup.com. We’re not here to show what great hackers we are by building a perfect site. Just suck it up, open a Meetup account, pay the fee, and let people find you.

Now here’s where you start to learn. Pay attention to your meetings. It doesn’t just mean listening to the speaker. It means you are the emcee. You are the master of ceremonies, making sure people are having a good time, learning, and that the speaker is comfortable and has what they need.

Look at your attendees. How are they interacting? Are they talking to each other? Are people isolated? Go sit down and talk to them. Then look at your speakers. Are they uncomfortable? Are they getting lost in their slides? That’s your opportunity to step in and break the ice, ask a question, or take some pressure off the speaker so they can teach.

Make sure there’s communication between the audience and the speaker. If there’s a lull or the audience seems disconnected, bring up the naive question and get feedback. Ask people what they didn’t like. Did they like the pizza? Did they like the topic? Pay attention to subtle feedback too: if everyone shows up for JavaScript but not Clojure, maybe do more JavaScript.

UGtastic is where I interview people in the tech community: leaders, conference organizers, user group folks, all that. Please come to the site, look at it, and tell me how bad I’m doing. If you run a user group or have an interesting perspective on technical community, I’d love to interview you. You can find me at UGtastic.com.

And 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.