QA/QA Services/Meetups

Meetup Brainstorming

At our last staff meeting Matt briefly mentioned the fact we had canceled the Mountain View meetup that was scheduled for Wednesday. Since we have not had great attendance and participation at the MV meetups, the purpose of this meeting will be a brainstorming session as we as attempt to reset expectations as to what we intend to get out of these events. Remotees - this does not just apply to Mt. View as we would like to start having meetups in other locations, both domestically and abroad.

Why are we having meetups?

• The original intent of the Mt. View meetups was to involve the QA group as well as other Mozilla folks to generate topics and run the meetups with the idea of getting new people involved in the project as well as introducing new topics for discussion both for a tech/non tech audience.
  • The MV Meetups started in 2009 and we have had 13 meetups since then that have covered a variety of topics:
    • Live Testing
    • Testing Web Properties
    • Joint Selenium Meetup with Sauce Labs
    • Weave

Why are we not having success in regards to attendance?

• Evening commitment a problem?
• Too many tech events in Silicon Valley on a given night (but may not be the case in other areas)?

Where should we have meetups?

• Locally
• At conferences where we already have a presence

How should we promote these meetups?

• Currently using Twitter, meetup.com, upcoming.yahoo and newsgroups to spread the word

Notes from Tomcat re: the German events

Announcements: -> In General - Events in Munich are very hard to get people to, because there is soo much you could choose here (and not just sports ;) . So we did a lot what we call "Web 2.0" Stuff. That includes Facebook Group, Posting and Group in something like a German Linked-in and a lot of activity on Blogs on Newsgroups.

So i think for Meetups we should spread the word a lot much more with individual twitter posts, a Group on Facebook/Linkedin - Posts of the Events in the quality Newsgroup, SQA / Firefox Group on Linkedin etc...

Even when as example only 6 people sign up via Facebook (whats mostly the minimum is in our case - another 6 on linkedin make 12 out of it :) So you can never over-advertise your Meetups. Spread the word is one essential key to a succesful meetup! Also having a plan for the next months is (like meetup on the 19.september -> Sessions about ... , 19. Oktober Sessions about... is very useful.

Organize something around Conferences -> We did in June before LinuxTag Conference a Meetup of Mozilla Fan's and interested people in Berlin (also Mitchell joined this event). Announcements were made through the various channels (as described) and we had about 20 people at this (very short and spontaneous planned) Meetup and even Press showed up and ended up with interviewing me ;)

Learn to know what people attending your Event -> In the Case of the Munich Events we do after our introduction (who we are, what we plan for the evening) a introduction-round. We give the Microphone to the people attending to let them introduce themselves, if they are involved already into OpenSource Projects and Communities and why there are here (learning, getting involved etc). That thats the effect of a little ice-breaker and also gives you as organizer a pretty good idea about your audience :)

Try out new things and learn from the feedback of your audience :) -> Also very interesting is learning from Feedback from the people attending your Event. Gives you new ideas (like i was invited to speak at a school about the Mozilla Project last December) and also gives you chances to improve adjust things. Proactive asking your audience about Feedback (what went great, what can we improve) and give them various ways to respond (email, in person etc).

Work together Projects to get more audience -> Working together with other projects from the OpenSource Area can result in synergy effects when organizing the event (reaching more people, more people attending). So collaboration can be a very valuable thing when it comes to make your meetup more popular.

Notes from Marcia/Tomcat's Session at the Community Leadership Summit

• Title of the Session was "Reaching Communities through Meetups"
• Objectives of the Session
  • Talk about creating sustainability
  • Challenges with Competing Meetups
  • Ideas for new things we could try

• Suggestions
  • Have a low barrier to entry as well as low expectations
  • Have Repeating events, signature events and joint events
  • Paint a clear picture of the event
  • Encourage people to have their friends come
  • Have an "influencer" show up at the event.
    • Sometimes adding a speaker will get more people to attend the event
  • Try something like "Beer and Blog" or "Hack-a-thon" which has worked well in Portland
  • In India they have "lunch clubs" or maybe try a breakfast group?
  • Mashable has happy hour mtgs at the same time and tweets a discount code

Notes from 7/29/10 meeting

• http://etherpad.mozilla.com:9000/QAMeetupNotes