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This is a guide for those who are interested in running a Hyperledger meetup. We encourage you to start a meetup in your area if there is not one nearby. If you are interested in becoming a meetup organizer, please read this guide and then contact us.
This is also a living document, so feel free to edit the page to add tips or suggestions and please let us know if there is information you’re looking for that isn’t here. You
Other Useful Resources
In addition to the information in this guide, you may also find these resources from meetup.com to be a helpful:
meetup.com's Organizer Best PracticesGuide
meetup.com's Product Help Center for Organizers
- meetup.com's quarterly webinar series for Hyperledger organizers
Becoming a meetup organizer
If you like networking, organizing venues and finding interesting speakers, then you would make a good meetup organizer.
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- promote your group, contact your members and gives a status update on using WeWork spaces for meetups
- Part Two (video) and (slides): Amol Kulkarni discusses how the community ran the National Indian meetup and how others can do the same and Adrian Avendano talks about how GST runs their meetups and demos a tool they are building to help organizers connect with speakers
- June 4, 2019 webinar (video) and (slides): Recaps tips from previous webinar and includes tips on how to transition leadership when an organizer steps down and engaging group members between events
- March 27, 2019 webinar (video) and (slides): Covers how to get people to show at events, how to find speakers, how to build a leadership team and meetup.com product updates.
Becoming a meetup organizer
If you like networking, organizing venues and finding interesting speakers, then you would make a good meetup organizer.
The process for being approved as an organizer is simple — after contacting us, we’ll find time to speak with you. During that call we’ll make sure that you’re serious about taking on the role and we’ll walk you through the support we offer (this guide also describes the support available).
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If you are working at an organization or are at a school, you may have easy access to space. If you don’t have access, many organizers have been able to find hosts in their local community who are happy to provide space for events. And considering that most meetups happen after working hours, it is often not a conflict for an organization or school to provide space in the evenings or on weekends.
And in some cities, there are free WeWork spaces available through a partnership between Meetup.com and WeWork. Take a look at the Meetup @ WeWork FAQs page for more details about how you can make use of this free space offerFor more ideas about venue options, check out Meetup.com's Finding the right venue for you support article.
Getting sponsorships and funding
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Sponsorship is limited to venue sponsorship (existing office space can be donated for an event or a third party space could be funded) and food and beverage sponsorship
Sponsorship dollars should not exceed the cost of either the venue or the food and beverages. Since the Hyperledger project is part of a non-profit with a mission to build and promote open source technologies, there should be zero profit involved in running meetups.
Events must remain vendor agnostic. Sponsors can be recognized by adding their name/logo on the Meetup event page and thanked at the beginning of the meetup, but it should be clear that all events are run by the Hyperledger community and not by any specific organization.
Sponsors may speak at a meetup just like any other person or organization is welcome to speak at a meetup. Any talk a sponsor gives needs to relate to what they are doing with Hyperledger though and product pitches in return for sponsorship dollars are strictly forbidden.
Sharing of any attendee data with sponsors is also strictly forbidden.
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Hyperledger though and product pitches in return for sponsorship dollars are strictly forbidden.
Sharing of any attendee data with sponsors is also strictly forbidden.
Running virtual meetups
Meetup organizers are encouraged to consider running virtual meetups online when that makes sense for your local community members. The tools provided by meetup.com for organizing in person meetups will also help you promote a virtual event, handle registration and communicate with attendees. For more about using meetup.com's tools to organize a virtual meetup, see their support article Hosting an online event on Meetup. And note that creating an online event on Meetup is a little different than creating an in person one – in particular, make sure when creating an event that you select the box for "Online Event" and add the video conference link.
Hyperledger has Zoom accounts that we can make available to organizers to use for running a virtual meetup. Before requesting access to a Zoom account, please read our Managing Zoom Meetings guide. To request access to a Zoom account, contact us with information about the day and time you are hosting the virtual meetup. We will then schedule the Zoom account and send you details on how to dial-in and record your events. Zoom offers two options – they have a meeting mode which provides an open call that allows for attendees to take part in discussions and a webinar mode that is more focused on one person presenting information out to a group.
And please let us know about virtual meetups you are planning so we can help you promote them. Since the virtual events aren't limited to who can physically travel to a specific location, we can help promote the meetup beyond your group members. For instance, we can send this to other meetup groups in a similar time zone or to other meetup groups who may be interested in the content (such as reaching out to all meetups in Spanish speaking countries if you are planning a virtual event with content in Spanish).
For tips for running effective meetups, we encourage organizers who have done this before to please share ideas and suggestions on the meetup organizer's mailing list and we'll add good ideas here. We'll also link to useful resources below:
- Meetup Webinar: Bringing Events Online
- Meetup Webinar: Strategies to Increase Your Online Event Show-ups
- Supporting a Community When Real Life Events Aren't Possible
- A Comprehensive List of Tips, Tools, and Examples for Event Organizers During the Coronavirus Outbreak
- 20 Ideas to Engage Virtual Event Attendees
- Virtual Conferences & Events: A Comprehensive Guide to Doing It Right
Streaming and recording live events
Streaming and recording your events is not required, but it is something you may be interested in. If you are considering doing this, please note that some people don’t want to be on record when they attend these events and this may also have a chilling effect on what people are comfortable saying at an event. In addition, what you can legally record may vary across jurisdictions and you cannot record and stream copyrighted material, like music or other content, without a release.
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Active meetup groups (defined as a group that has held at least one meetup in the last 3 months) are eligible to receive free swag from our Hyperledger store to give away at their events. Organizers can make a new request for swag each quarter every 6 months and the amount of the coupon codes to use at the store will be based on the size of their group:
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