Daniel Moth mentioned Chris William's post "my 21 thoughts on starting a user group".
Chris did an excellent job listing what it takes to start a user group.
I wish Page Brooks, Chris Reeder, and I had this list when we decided to start PDANUG. Fortunately, I think we were able to learn the ropes quickly.
Here are a few tips and tricks we have learned over the years that I think have made all the difference:
- Check Lists:
- There are a ton of things to track, remember, and jungle to make each and every user group event a success.
- It's a good idea to have a To Bring Check List and a To Do Check List.
- To Bring Check List covers things like plates, napkins, ice, cups, sign in sheets, evaluations, related SWAG, and so on...
- To Do Check List handles the details like reminders, announcements, notifications, Web site updates, and so on...
- Without the check list, inevitably when the user group event rolls around everyone will be busy and someone will forget something.
- Online Community:
- Have a Web site for the user group. I recommend keeping it simple and using something like DotNetNuke here. Sure, you could code it yourself, or you could "stand on the shoulders of giants".
- Have a Blog for the user group, and take advantage of RSS feeds for group notification of events. We like DasBlog.
- Send Email Notifications and Reminders. It is easy for members to lose track of when events are happening. We try to remind a week in advance and either the day before of the day of the event.
- Event Registration. There are a lot of great sites that both promote local events and help manage them. We are big fans of Eventbrite.
- Local Community:
- Recruit: Get together with all your friends and invite them to your user group. Also make sure they invite all their friends as well.
- Geek Lunches: Low commitment opportunities for people to have a "taste" of what the user group meetings will be like.
- Colleges and Universities: Tons of possible members, but if events are held off campus it will really effect student turnout.
- Build relationships with the professors and the university itself. Great opportunity for everyone to work together.
- Local Media. Sometimes local newspapers will list events for non-profits, and local public access stations may as well.
- Speakers Wanted: Make sure to encourage members to present. Also, consider having "Open Mic Nights" where anyone can speak on anything for 5-15 minutes. Lots of fun and low commitment.
- Local User Groups:
- Build relationships with all the local user groups and user group leaders in your area. We have bunch in our area and you probably do as well. They can help you, and I'm sure they will.
- Inform local user groups of your user group's events and activities. If your user group is have the right event or a special speaker there is a good chance people want mind making a trip out to see you.
- Also educate your members about local events from other user groups, but also include any MSDN events, developer conferences, and related opportunities to your group.
- If you are creating flyers for your user group consider sharing them with other groups to help busy user group leaders to promote your group's events.
- Speaker Exchange: Instead of speaking at your user group for the Nth time consider agreeing to speak at another user group's event in exchange for someone coming and speaking at your next event.
- Code Camps: Attend code camps and present if possible great opportunity to spread the word and recruit speakers as well.
- Speaker Awareness: We learned there were people traveling from south of us to present in user groups north of us, and vice versa. Once we knew this we knew we had found some potential speakers.
- Sponsorship:
- User groups do take some small amount of money to keep going. This is just a fact of life, and at least for a while there will be the times when you just have to "eat" the costs of the pizza and soda.
- Contact local developer shops and companies and ask them to sponsor meetings. Pizza and soda are not expensive and it is a great way for companies to get their names in front of passionate developers.
- Donation Jar: Donations will never cover all the costs of user group events, but they can help.
- Paid Membership: Some groups have optional paid membership that includes extra benefits.
- Book publishers, magazine publishers, and many software companies will donate books, magazines, and software to user groups. You just have to take a few minutes and let them know you exist.
At first starting a user group may appear a little intimidating but really it is a lot more fun than work. You get to meet a ton of great people and learn so much more than you would on your own.
What do you think? Did I leave anything off? Do you have an idea that might help someone start a user group? Please share it with us all. Feel free to post a comment or even better blog about it yourself.