 Hi, welcome to my session on connecting and growing your community through Meetups. I have given this presentation once back in January this year at a physical in-person event before all the lockdowns due to COVID-19. Things have changed quite a bit since then, with many conferences and Meetups going virtual, just like this one. So even though many of the ideas still apply, I will also touch a bit on the logistics of virtual Meetups. My name is Carol Chen and here's briefly about who I am and what I've done. I've gone from being a developer behind the computer to in front of people, connecting with the community and organizing events, to, well, nowadays it looks like I'm back behind the computer but still connecting people. I've lived in four countries on three continents and traveled quite a bit thanks to my job. I won't bore you with the rest of the details, but please feel free to connect with me via some of these channels with the user ID Saibat. While today's talk is not specifically about the Ansible community, I will be using many examples from my experiences in the past year with the Ansible community and working with the community Meetup groups. Hopefully, some of these experiences and ideas can apply to the Meetup groups in your community. This is a map of Ansible Meetup groups as well as Ansible contributors around the world. The data is gathered from GitHub and Meetup.com APIs. You can see that there are plenty of activities across the US from east to west coasts and as we look over to Europe and Asia, there are some hot spots for Meetup groups as indicated by the large news circles. But in countries such as Russia and China, we have contributors from them as indicated by the shades of green, but almost no Meetups. Why is that? Perhaps the contributors and users are remote and located far apart. Maybe they don't have a culture of Meetups. These are some of the things I get to explore in my job. Ansible has around 130 sponsored Meetups, which means that we pay for the Meetup.com subscriptions for these groups. However, most of these Meetups are run by community volunteers. There are some organized by Red Haters, but generally we encourage community members to run them and we support them as much as possible, with, for example, Meetup content and promotion. Before I go on, I want to thank Greg Sutcliffe, the data scientist in my team, for gathering and analyzing these various metrics and helping me make sense of them by finding the best way to sort, filter and present the data. These are the five largest Ansible Meetup groups. Great numbers, right? It's nice to say, hey, I helped organize one of the largest Ansible Meetup groups in the world with 3,000 plus members. However, it is quite obvious that all of these are major metropolitan areas. I think any of them has a population larger than the whole of Finland, where I'm based. So when you have a large city with so many people, generally you can get a decent response when you start a group and invite people to join. And while we celebrate these groups, we cannot neglect the smaller groups that are just as effective and interesting. My first assignment when I joined the Ansible community team was to focus on the European Meetups as I'm based in Europe. I checked out the largest European groups and, for reference, compared them to some of the others, such as Sao Paulo, Brazil, in Brazil. It is a fairly large group, but they've only had six previous Meetups in just as many years. Whereas some Meetup groups may have six Meetups in a single year, which goes to show that numbers aren't everything without context. These numbers are a first step to explore more behind them. Even though this group is in the top five, it's not the most active. These don't necessarily correlate. My early mistake was probably only paying attention to the largest European groups initially, which are still important. But more often than not, the smaller ones actually need more help and are just seeing. So that's one set of numbers, the number of members in the Meetup group. This slide has probably a more interesting set of numbers. The RSVPs, that is the number of people who say, yes, I want to attend this Meetup and indicate their interest with registrations. Over a period of 12 months, which is early 2019 to early 2020, these are the groups with the highest average RSVP numbers. In the previous slide, if you remember, Pune was the largest Meetup group. However, London has the highest mean RSVP number. Montreal and Munich are not even in the top 10 in terms of number of members, but they have relatively high average RSVP. So a specific set of numbers does not tell the whole story. And if we go once that further, as we take the ratio of the RSVP against the member count, you can get a better idea of what percentage of the members are actually active and engaged. Down the list, we have one of the smaller Meetup groups in Poland, which has already had six Meetups since they started in August last year. So that's less than a year ago, including a couple of virtual ones. And with high participation rates from its members. Of course, we have to consider that London and Pune are huge cities with their members distributed across a wide area. So for example, an event held in one end of London probably won't attract those from the other. In any case, within Europe, we went from six active Meetups to 12. My definition of an active group is one that has held a Meetup in the last six months. Some were in active groups that have become active again by organizing Meetups and a few are newly established groups. And this is just within Europe, which was my focus in the past year. Those are some Meetup numbers such as member count, Meetup frequency and RSVP rates. While we can go even deeper analysis of them, such as correlating with the GitHub contribution figures, let's keep the focus on Meetups. By asking these five questions with each Meetup group I work with, I learned a lot along the way. And more importantly, that they can have very different answers depending on the Meetup group. Each group can have different dynamics and challenges. So the things for you to consider will be varied as well. In the next part of the presentation, I will offer some C's as in the latter C in response to the W's, the questions, as starting points to think about how to answer these questions for your particular groups. First question to consider is why? Why do we have Meetups? At first, I put the response to this as common interest or passion or passion. However, I think interest or passion usually implies that you are already involved in the project or know enough about the topic. So I think a better term will be common curiosity. Sometimes it is simply the desire to learn about something, to experience something new. Perhaps you noticed a Meetup in your local community or nowadays online on a topic that you might have heard something about, but don't know enough to necessarily be really interested about it. But you're curious and that can be a motivation. And for those who already have some knowledge, the passion is also the curiosity to see what else is out there that you didn't know before or have not explored previously. So curiosity encompasses the desire to learn, also desire to share. Learn about your users. I'm always curious to find out how people are using Ansible in their daily lives, both at work and personally, which feeds back to how we can improve the project, the contribution process and so on. Curiosity for opportunities. Meetups are great for networking, both socially as well as professionally, which can bring interesting opportunities into your life. Now, this may not work that naturally in a virtual setting, but there are more and more tools nowadays to facilitate that. A discussion about the selection of tools will be a whole other talk, but keep in mind the basics of making things as accessible as possible. If there is already an existing chat group for your community, stick with that. Try to avoid tools that have complicated sign-up requirements or are not cross-platform. For example, use a browser-based access instead of having to download a client which can be OS specific, and also providing a mobile access option. Let me circle back to curiosity. Once in a while, it's good to have a refresher talk or session for beginners. There's a tendency for established meetups to constantly dive into deep technical talks, which may be interesting to existing members, but possibly alienating for newcomers. Remember, we were all newbies once and had to start from somewhere. Thus, it is a great way to welcome new members and grow your meetup group. There are such sessions of time. Next, we take a look at who. Who are we targeting the meetups to? Who can help organize the meetup? Who will be presenting and who can promote the meetup and get the word out? There are different kinds of people that can be involved, and it may seem overwhelming for someone trying to do everything by themselves. Here's a hint. You don't have to do everything by yourself. You don't have to know everyone. You have connections. Think about, is there someone I know who can find sponsors or I look for speakers? Reach out to people in your company, your friends, and your community. Even if they may not be the one who can help, they may know someone else who can. Connections, we get more connection. Sometimes we have community members reaching out to us with the request to create a local meetup group, and we assist them with logistics such as the meetup.com account and promoting the group's events on Twitter, while they focus on other details such as looking for local speakers or venues, or nowadays online tools. So the reverse side of approaching others for help is to make sure that you are also reachable and approachable. Provide clear instructions and contact info on your project or community website so that you or your team can be contacted for more information. Lastly, as your meetups grow, pay attention and get to know the attendees. They could be a future speaker or a co-organizer for your meetup. Or at the very least, their feedback and interest could determine the desired content for future meetups and who you could invite to present next. With the question of what, we are talking about content. Some meetup groups arrange for one main presentation per event, while others line up three to four talks per meetup. There's no right or wrong way of doing it, as it again depends on the dynamics of your group. A group in a smaller city or area, where it is easier for people to get together, can have more frequent but perhaps shorter meetups. On the other hand, some topics may be better served by a longer format, like a workshop. Having a process where potential attendees can submit requests for topics and where potential speakers can propose their talks. As an example, Ansible London group uses GitHub issues and pull requests for these. However, be aware that not everyone is familiar with or comfortable using Git. So provide an alternative way if needed, such as through email or chat. In addition, talks do not necessarily have to be deeply technical in nature. Caring about the challenges faced by a new user can give insights on how the user experience and documentation, or even translations, can be improved. And do a follow-up session on the improvements made. There you go, there's content for future meetups. In the present day of most meetups being held virtually, I think some people are getting online events fatigue. I know I am. It could be easier to organize a virtual meetup, but it's also harder to get the participation and more importantly, having the attendees stay and feel engaged. Therefore, all the more having concise and compelling content is crucial to keeping people's attention. Finally, if it's possible, make the content shareable after the event. Upload the slides and demo code as well as video recordings somewhere accessible so that those who missed the meetup or those who want to refer back to the presentations or even those who want to find out what your meetup group is all about can do so. This will help retain existing members and keep them interested and maybe even attract new people. We have some community-managed GitHub repos for this purpose as well as a YouTube account. We don't dictate what that as well meetup groups have to use them, but if they want, we enable and facilitate them to do that. When? When do we have meetups and how often should we organize one? There is no magic answer that suits everyone. Some groups meet up every month and that's great, but it's not better or worse than those that meetup once every three or every six months. However, being consistent can make scheduling easier, especially when you need a venue. For example, requesting a meeting area every other month on the last Thursday of the month, let's say, can make it more convenient for the provider or sponsor to plan for that resource. Some groups gather the speakers first and then try to find a date. This probably works fine in the current virtual setup. Other groups set a date in advance and then look for presenters. That might be better if you need a location or a certain number of people and have to requisite social distancing measures in place. And so you want to confirm the location first and they can get prepared for that. The predictability that counts with consistency can help your community as well. When they know the cadence of your meetups, it's easier to plan to attend them or to speak at them. The last question is where? This is a hard one, especially with the current situation. It seems that the default answer to this is online. However, I think, and I hope, things will start moving back to the physical world because we as humans need the personal face-to-face interaction. Going back to the first question of why we have meetups, one of the recurring themes I've encountered is networking. And while that is possible to do remotely and virtually, it does not have the same impact. I will cycle back to virtual meetups later but for physical meetups. This is the question that usually has cost involved. Most open source and community meetups that I'm aware of are free to make it accessible to as many people as possible. Free meetups still have a cost because most of the time, the venues are not free. The refreshments are not free. I suspect a lot of organizers spend majority of their time trying to get a location and find sponsors. If you are working for a company that has space available for such purposes, for example, a conference room for use after work, please consider offering it to the group if it doesn't incur too much additional overhead. It relates back to the point of meetup consistency. If you have a regular meetup schedule, it's easier to coordinate with the venue. However, it doesn't always have to be in the same location either. It can be consistent in terms of alternating between two or three venues in a city. Especially in a larger city, alternating locations allows you to cater to and reach more attendees. Next, there is the cost of refreshments, which brings me to the RSVP problem. Those of you who have organized events or meetups, especially free ones, would know what I'm talking about. They out of a hundred registrations, only 30 or 40 people show up. How much food and drinks do you prepare so that you don't waste food, and yet they are able to satisfy everyone? I've been involved in many discussions about this, and I'm all ears, you have good suggestions. Charging people a nominal sum to attend could be a solution. For example, five to 10 euros or dollars, and refund them if they show up. But that's a lot of overhead in terms of dealing with money. How do you first accept the payments followed by how do you process the refunds? Is it by cash or something else? And when money is involved, there could be legal considerations as well, which differs from countries to states and other jurisdictions. There's an Ansible Meetup Group in the Netherlands, whose meetups usually consist of full-day workshops, which means more preparation work in terms of arranging space, things like power outlets and internet connections, as well as lunch for all the participants. Very often they'll have a wait list because you cannot accommodate too many people in a workshop at one time. So if you register for a space and don't show up, you are depriving another person of the chance to attend a workshop. This group's organizers keep a yellow card scoring system, which penalizes you from attending a number of future meetups if you get two yellow cards in a row. You get a yellow card when you are as sweet as to an event, but don't show up. So two strikes and you have to sit on the bench for a while. Now this can work for smaller groups, but it will be much more challenging if you can score for a much larger group. If we look at virtual meetups, sure, we may not have to worry about the cost of annual food and there's perhaps less restrictions for the number of attendees. However, some conferencing tools have subscription costs as well as attendee limits. Even if you use a free tool, there may be additional infrastructure and bandwidth costs. As we slowly move back into the physical meetup space, some members may be hesitant at first and rightfully so. Thus, you might want to keep the remote option available in parallel. So I think no matter online or off, or perhaps even hybrid meetups, there will be various associated costs, which you'll have to balance as you make your decisions and plan. Now, after a while, after you've considered other various questions and planned your community and you have an established meetup group with frequent events and decent turnout every time, but it's roughly the same group of people that shows up each time. How do you try to reach more people and grow your community? But part of this, it is about being inclusive. I'm not going to give a whole talk about diversity and inclusion since I'm sure there will be many good talks in the diversity empowerment at this conference. I'll just highlight a few things that we should consider as event planners and meetup organizers. Here I've listed some examples of special needs that an attendee may have. The tweet is from DevCon Back Republic, the conference where I previously presented this talk at. As I've never had the fortune to be aware of before, I'll have to admit that this particular need has not crossed my mind. It's not that you have to prepare additional accommodations every single time that you have a meetup, but try to be observant and proactive and also ask in advance about special requests so that the potential attendees won't just dismiss the possibility of attending your meetup. For example, if you know someone in the audience who is hard of hearing, you can remind the presenters to add more text to their slides, which by the way, my slides are a poor example of. Reserve a seat for them near the front and help with lip reading. Captions can be added to videos before you upload them or speak clearly so that the auto captioning will work well. And for those who have problems with their site, again, speaking clearly helps as they don't have the visual cues. If you use images in your presentation materials, describe them in words. Conversely, if you are someone with certain needs, please don't hesitate to reach out to the organizer. I believe most organizers have the best intentions, but they can't help you if they don't know what your needs are. These are a few more considerations, perhaps applicable to physical events rather than virtual. Also, the last few may make more sense for larger events, but you can always try them out at, you can always try them out at meetups. Most of them should be self-explanatory, but it's good to keep a checklist so that something doesn't accidentally fall off your radar as you're busy dealing with all the other event details. I'll touch a bit on the language. Here, I'm not referring to swear words, although there's really no need to swear. As far as I know, those words are not in the lexicon of technology. I'm referring to the presentation language. For example, English, Czech, Polish, and so on. This very much depends on the configuration of the audience as well as the presenter. It's something that I encounter as an immigrant, earlier on most meetups were in Finnish. You can try to find English-speaking ones which are more commonplace now, or do what I did, start organizing your own meetups. There are also other alternatives. Some groups have mixed languages, for example, English and German, and let the speakers present in the language they are more comfortable in. And some recommend that at least the slides be in English, then they can do the presentation in the local language. At the end of the day, it is about your local community and what works for your audience. Thank you for listening to my talk, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Hi, everyone. Thanks again for joining the session. And I see there's a lot of questions and I don't have much time left because I used up almost all the 25 minutes to record the session. So please join me on Slack in channel 2-track-community-leadership-ospo-to-do, and we can continue the conversation there. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of the summit.