Six months after moving to Dublin I hosted my first meetup event. This was an event for tech people in the city. After 2 years of lockdown, getting 11 strangers together to chat, laugh, and commiserate was a bit surreal. Mostly, it was fun.
Here’s the why and how behind hosting meetups.
(If you’re in Dublin and want to attend the next tech meetup, sign-up here.)
Why host meetups?
First, there’s an appetite for it. This is a fancy way of saying: “People are lonely.” We’re tired of remote work, and of staring at our own faces on a Zoom call. We’re dying for a proper laugh. After the meetup, people said to me: “Thanks for doing this. I want to meet other people, but I’d never organize it myself.”
Second, to make friends. Conventional experience shows it’s harder to make friends as an adult. You’ve got to make cheese and feed mouths. That means more responsibilities, less time, and fewer shared experiences. The easiest solve? Be the host. Friendships follow facilitation.
Third and most selfishly: I want to expand my network in the tech scene. A deep network helps achieve personal and professional goals. It’s also helpful to meet cool, interesting people.
Brianne Kimmel (Founder at Worklife Ventures) is my inspiration here. Today she’s an early investor in Public, Decent, and Webflow. But when she ran social media at Expedia, she was already hosting dinners and drinks for startups. Brianne is a self-professed “very normal person” but early in her career she decided to expand:
“I started as a marketer. Started meeting startups on evenings and weekends. Started hosting dinners. [You later realize] you end up meeting a lot of people by proximity. You go to a dinner, meet 1 or 2 people, you make connections, you stay in touch, and that’s how you build your network. And everyone is going somewhere.”[efn_note]https://www.mfmpod.com/videos/how-venture-capitalists-make-money-with-brianne-kimmel-my-first-million-206/[/efn_note]
The MVE: How to organize a meetup
Since this was the first meetup, I treated it like a minimum viable event (MVE). The last thing I wanted was to organize something, only to find out people would prefer staying home and Netflixing.
So I posted in a 1K person Facebook group for our apartment community. The post was one line:
“Peeps who work in tech… any interest in doing a meet up?”
My go/no-go criteria was 20 comments or likes. I got 30, then moved on to setting a location. Again the theme here was MVE: it needed to be as simple as possible for me to organize and set up. It also needed to be easy for people to attend. Fortunately, there’s a lounge in our apartment complex you can reserve. This was easier than finding a good restaurant or pub, so I booked it for the first available weekend evening.
Next, I created a Facebook event. I made it pretty with a graphic in Google Slides. Then I shared the meetup link with the group. I didn’t have an event structure or agenda yet, so I said it’d be TBD. In the spirit of MVE, I didn’t want to worry about refreshments so said the meetup was a BYOB event.
Distribution: Getting the word out
After creating the event on Facebook, I thought it’d be easy to invite people on Facebook. I was wrong. You get two options: manually send invites, or spam the entire group. I hate spam so chose the latter. Unfortunately, just because you’re in the same group doesn’t mean you can send the invite.
To reach as many people as possible, I:
- Manually invited everyone possible
- Updated the original post with a link to the meetup
- Tagged everyone who liked or commented on it
- Reposted a reminder about the meetup every ~3-4 days
Finally, I asked management to mention the meetup in our internal app. The app’s UX is awful so I didn’t expect much. But I got 4 queries from it and one person actually came to the meetup.
These notifications led to 20 RSVPs and 15 maybes. As a rule, expect a 50% conversion rate. Meaning half of the people who RSVP yes will show up (I assume maybes will not show). 11 people came to the meetup or a 55% conversion rate.
Structure & logistics: How to host a meetup
Structure makes or breaks an event.
Your guests are trying something new, changing their routine, and meeting new people. Your job? Reward them for their courage with a fun event and good vibes. You might think this requires a big personality or you need to be amazing at “networking”. The dirty secret is good structure does most of the heavy lifting.
First, get these for your event:
- Nametags. I’ve learned a lot about events from Nick Gray. This is my favorite tip. It’s dorky and it works.
- Markers. To use with the nametags 🙂
- Cups. Recommended for a BYOB event.
- Food and drink. It’s BYOB but as the host, bring extra.
Next, my favorite trick to get “really good with names”: review everyone’s Facebook profile before the meetup. The easiest way to memorize strangers’ names is to start early.
I scheduled the meetup from 18:00 – 20:00. The structure:
- 17:30 – Set-up
- 18:00 – People arrive. Have everyone grab a name tag and write down their name and company.
- 18:15 – Quick introductions
- 18:20 – Speed icebreakers. 3-5 icebreakers, each one 2 minutes each. Pair up in twos, switching your partner every 2 minutes.
- 18:30 – Group photo
- 18:45 – Hang out
- 20:00 – Wrap up
Make sure you finish your event strong. All the work you put into the end builds momentum for your next event.
Remind folks you plan to host events regularly. Ideally, you’ve scheduled the next meetup. If so, let them know when it is!
I recommend creating a signup list and collecting email addresses. I actually did this before the meetup and told people to sign up. I asked for name, email, LinkedIn profile, and role function. After signing up, they got a welcome email, asking what they’re looking for in future meetups.
Share the photo of the meetup with the group and tag everyone. By group, I mean people who attended and everyone who expressed interest. You want people to know the event happened and it was fun. For those who didn’t come, it gives them a glimpse at what to expect. If you do a write-up (like this one!) share that as well.
How to improve future meetups
I’d move the event off of Facebook. Creating an event is easy but it’s downhill from there. It was difficult to invite and share the event. Sharing on Facebook got little reach. Plus there’s no way to enable automatic reminders.
The timing of the group photo killed all the momentum we built during the speed icebreakers. I’ll experiment with shifting it later in the meetup and finding a more natural breaking point. The downside: you’re more likely to forget to take the photo.
The loose structure worked here but I’d like to do more, like presentations or lightning talks. By getting attendees more involved, they’ll feel more ownership of the events.
If you’re in Dublin and interested in attending the next tech meetup, sign up here!