So you want to host a Finland Azure User Group meetup, but have no idea how to do it? Great news! You are in the right place. Use this guide to plan for your meetup. This guide is meant for newcomer organizers who have no previous meetup hosting experience. Pull requests and comments are very much welcome!
Finland Azure User Group events are built by the community, for the community. This means that everyone is encouraged to attend, speak at and host FAUG events in an equal mannaer. As an organizer or host of a Finland Azure Group event, you are responsible for understanding, sharing and ultimately enforcing the code of conduct:
We seek to provide a respectful, friendly, professional experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, physical appearance, disability, age, race or religion. We do not tolerate any behavior that is harassing or degrading to any individual, in any form. Individuals are responsible for knowing and abiding by these standards. We encourage everyone to assist in creating a welcoming and safe environment. Please report any concerns, suspicious or disruptive activity or behavior directly to any of the organizers.
Use this agenda as a baseline to get started with your event. Feel free to add or remove session slots, and experiment with session lenghts. This timeline works well for an afternoon session (starting with welcome words at 16:30).
- Welcome words
- Find the template from FAUG Github and customize for your event
- Remember to include Wifi details!
- Host session 15 min (marketing) + 30 min (technical)
- Food 30 min
- Session 45 min
- Session 45 min
- Discussion
- A list of possible speakers and sessions is available at Sessionize
- A great way to find more, or confirm Sessionize speakers is to ask in the Slack network bit.ly/msgurut in the #Azure or #Faug channels.
- Any format, length or previous speaker experience is welcome!
- The most engaging sessions have had an element of a case study, use cases and Lessons Learned
- If the speaker is comfortable only presenting in Finnish, that's perfectly fine too - as long as you mention that in the agenda :)
- Size: should comfortably seat upwards from 20 people. Typically this is an internal cafeteria / lounge room or an auditorium.
- Location: central, reachable by public transport
- Overflow capacity is a plus
- A suitable venue does not have distractions (random people moving in and out) or does not distract others. This is relevant when a venue is in a coworking space or shared office)
- Are there any special arrival instructions?
- Is the venue accessible?
- Do you need to post signs to help guide people to the event?
- If the event is hosted outside regular office hours, when does the reception close?
- Do you need to provide the name list upfront to the security / reception?
- Do you need extra people to help you welcome attendees or open elevator access?
- Do you need to setup the chairs or handle other practicalities yourself? If so, reserve enought time and helping hands for this.
Predicting attendee and no-show count is hard, so you should prefer food that is easily shareable, such as Pizza, sushi etc. This allows for people to get a second serving if they're hungry, but also allows for scaling for unusually high turnouts - it's better to let everyone have a slice of pizza than to run out of prepackaged lunch boxes.
- In the Helsinki area, a 30% no-show rate is quite standard. Circumstances such as weather or competing meetups could lower this even further.
- Whenever possible, order everything as a lactose free option.
- At least 1/4 of portions should be vegetarian
- For pizza, it's a good idea to reserve at least 1/4 of a pizza per person.
Keep in mind that as the volume of food you will order is quite high, you should order the catering a couple of days in advance.
Soft drinks and beer is always appreciated by the attendees. For marketing purposes, serving drinks with the branding of the event host company might be a good idea.
Note that some venues do not allow outside catering to be organized. This means that you must use the venue's only catering provider (Fazer, ISS or similar). Ask from your marketing or HR department, or anyone who has organized events before!
How much does it cost to host a meetup? The cost depends on many variables, such as:
- Venue
- Usually no, but in some shared office buildings there is an extra costs associated with using an auditorium or other shared rooms.
- Usually the rental cost is between 200€-500€ per evening
- Catering
- Food and beverages are the main cost component.
- You should expect to reserve 1 pizza per 4 attendees, meaning your food costs should stay under 200 € if you keep the pizzas to Kotipizza-class and don't go too fancy.
- Extras
- travel expenses for speakers?
- video recording / live stream? Who has a company credit card?
Who to approach, what is practical and what is hard?
Meetup.com: as soon as you have decided the date and the venue, reach out to the FAUG crew and we will help publish to FAUG meetup.com and promote you as a co-organizer of the event
- Your company newsletter / blogpost / website - involve your marketing team
- Internal communications - now's a great chance to invite your colleagues who wouldn't normally have time to join!
- Reach out to other user groups in the area
- Other clouds
- Serverless
- DevOps
- .NET developer user group
- Other Microsoft user groups
- If possible, do an AV check before the doors open for attendees
- Play quiet music at the background in the room before the event starts.
- Be present, meet the attendees and show them around
- Thank the speakers and hosts personally
Keep the wider FAUG community informed and involved:
- Tweet to @azureugfi
- Take pictures!
- Monitor the social media feeds and react to people posting about the meetup
- Upload event pictures to Meetup
- Upload the welcome words to GitHub in a new folder as a Pull Request
- Ask the speakers to upload their materials to GitHub in the same folder