Organizing meetups

A meetup is an informal gathering of individuals interested in Drupal, aimed at building local knowledge and community. Depending on the size of the group, it could be a time for people to ask questions and get answers from others in the group, a social time, or there could be more formal presentations on a topic by one or more group members each meeting. "Lightning talk" days are also popular: each person can have 5-10 minutes to present a question, a new module they've learned to use, or some other topic of interest.

Location

• Your employer’s conference room.
• A cafe or restaurant.
• Library meeting room.
• University classroom.
• Virtual (Zoom or similar online meeting software)

Frequency

Meetups are often held once per month. Some are twice a month, some every three months. The answer is more about the community and how often they want to meet. If there are only five of you, then once a month may be too close together.

Preparation

Meetups will often include one or more informal presentations. Find some people in your community who have some sort of expertise or want to talk. Find that person and bring them to the meetup. They don't need to be an expert, just to have some knowledge to share.

Sample agenda

Generally a meetup is around two hours long.

1. Introductions
   • Who are you?
   • What brings you here?
   • What do you do?
   • How do you use Drupal?
   • What are your websites, what companies do you work for?
   • Generally catching up.
2. Presentation if you have one. This works well if it is from a half hour to an hour.

3. Next hour, one of two things:
   • Q and A on the presentation
   • Branching out into small group discussion. Divide up into several small groups focused on specific topics. For example, there might be small groups on: theming, module development, etc.

Publicity

Be sure to publish each event on in the Community Events section,

If your city, country, or region already has a group on groups.drupal.org, you might want to post it there. 

Some organizers prefer to use Meetup.com, Luma, Eventbrite, or a similar site to reach a broader audience. Consider posting on LinkedIn and tagging anyone in your local Drupal community to whom you are connected.

Member Platform is a Drupal community initiative that will provide meetup and local association organizers with a platform to collect members and RSVPs for events much like Meetup.com.

Local User Group Documentation

Here are examples of documentation for organizing specific local user groups.

• How to Organize the DrupalNYC Monthly Meetup

• How to Organize the San Francisco Drupal Users Group (SFDUG)