 Hi, everyone. My name is Alice Still and I'm going to take you on a whistle-stop tour of how and why we organized Grew and developed our local WordPress meet-up in Brighton, UK. So I own a company called Unremble. I'm also the lead organizer of Wired Camp Brighton and one of the organizers of our local WordPress meet-ups called Wired Up Brighton. There are many different ways to contribute to WordPress, one of which is by organizing events like Wired Camps and WordPress meet-ups. But why would you choose to organize a WordPress meet-up? Well, there are lots of reasons, many of which are probably the same reasons why you're here at Wired Camp Europe. But mostly it probably always comes back to the fact that you just really like you just really like it and you like giving back to the community and getting involved. So in August 2016, we're just about recovered from the first ever Wired Camp Brighton. We were very happy with how it went, but we weren't so happy with the number of local speaker applications that we received. It was a real wake-up call that we should be engaging more local people in WordPress community. But how? Well, we'd already had a local WordPress meet-up group called Wired Up, but we weren't meeting regularly and when we did it, it was often the same people who came. So our theory was if we could somehow reach people who had never attended before, we'd increase awareness and eventually make a more diverse and sustainable community in Brighton. So and then with more local involvement in Wired Up, we thought it would be easier to find local speakers for Wired Camp Brighton in 2017. But we needed to find the WordPress fans that we hadn't come across before. And if you keep doing the same thing, you can only expect the same result, right? So I figured why not make a slightly silly 2016 themed poster? And I admit this poster is not my greatest work, but it reached a whole bunch of people that we hadn't reached previously. Local people who had no idea that we had a WordPress meet-up in Brighton. We had 28 sign-ups and 20-something people came along in August 2016, most of whom who had never been to a Wired Up before. There were lots of good conversations and new faces, and we gathered ideas for future meet-ups. And it was actually so busy that I only remembered to take these two photos. But it was also really stressful. We had a real worry beforehand that not enough people would show up. And although the venue was technically free as we were having it at a cafe, they needed to make enough money off of food and drinks in order to justify staying open late just for us. But we weren't doing this to sell food, we were doing it to grow our community. So how could we maintain the success of that August meet-up? Well, removing some of those pressures, everything was pointing to finding a new regular venue. By this stage, though, we'd already investigated quite a few other options before that cafe and we'd previously met at a co-working space, but it wasn't particularly welcoming and the area we were using was a bit small. We'd also dabbled with using a pub, but they can be noisy and difficult when you're trying to do presentations. We felt ready for somewhere that could hold our potentially growing numbers, but it would be nice at the same time to not worry if our numbers varied or dropped. So back in August 2016, I'd also happened to start working from a bigger co-working space called Eagle Labs. And I knew they were keen to support local groups, so I floated the idea of holding our WordPress meet-up there with a manager. And he said, yes, and suddenly everything became so much easier. We didn't need to have a certain number of people attend to justify keeping the venue open, and they helped us promote the meet-up through their own marketing channels. In return, we make sure they know that we're very grateful. We include them in the sponsor section on meetup.com and we tweet our thanks regularly. Our venue is one of the main reasons why our meet-up is such a success and goes so well, and it gives us the freedom to try out new things without worrying about numbers or costs. If you aren't lucky enough to get a venue for free like ours, there's now a solution for that, and you can apply to WordPress community support to have them pay for the venue itself. And I'll share a link to the forum at the end of this presentation. So we finally had the venue sorted, but as we were meeting in the evenings, we also needed to ensure that people were fed and watered. So by chance, one of the original Word-Up organizers, David Lockie, owns a very thriving local agency called Pragmatic, and they were very quick to offer up food and drinks on a regular basis. And they've been doing so every month since. It's a cost-effective way for them to sponsor locally, and the attendees love them for it. Again, we include them in our sponsor section on meetup.com and regularly tweet our thanks. So now that we had the venue for drinks or sorters, it was time to focus on reaching further beyond our networks and engaging even more people through marketing. Bearing in mind, all the Word-Up organizers also have day jobs. We need to be quite selective about how we do our marketing. So every WordPress meetup gets a free meetup.com account, which is very handy. Using this, we've passively built up a list of people who are interested in WordPress, and then every month, as soon as we can, we publish an event or meetup, which then gets sent out to our list of now around about 300 people. We also rely a lot on Twitter. So we promote every meetup there, tweet during our events and include photos and our own hashtags. The organizers, attendees and sponsors, also regularly retweet and tweet about the events. And we've got a local organization called WAD Sussex, and they currently tweet about events as well and also share them on their website. We also use Twitter to call for speakers and share general news and updates. I find that Twitter is much faster and easier to use and reaches a wider audience more effectively than using Facebook and LinkedIn. However, there's no reason not to use those as well if you have time just to reach more people. Aside from that, we also promote through Word of Mouth and we engage with other local meetups and we also engage with other influencers to further promote without too much effort. And finally, we have a WordPress website. Full disclosure, we are terrible with keeping this updated, but it is on the to-do list for this year, where we'll also put in more information about what we do when we meet and contact details and blog posts about the events. But ultimately, the aim of all our marketing is to ensure we continue reaching a wide and diverse audience and avoid becoming exclusive. So after all this, do we actually have a successful meetup? The thing is, there are lots of ways in which you can define and measure success. If we were defining it by the cost to sponsor per attendee, then yes, we usually do pretty well at that. Our meetups are often well attended and we have pretty good online engagement as well. But numbers are good in some ways because they mean we're reaching more people, but it's not just about numbers. If you get even a few more people engaged, interested, or comfortable in this space, then you have a successful meetup. For us, success is when a fellow organizer comes to the rescue or when a professional beatkeeper called Neil moves from using Joomla to WordPress and finds a place to come for help and support. It's when we organize a gap-speaking workshop and some of the attendees go on to apply to speak at a conference they didn't think they could apply to, or when we see greater diversity among our members. And when we see an increase in local speaker applications to work at Brighton. And to run a successful meetup, you also need something else aside from a venue, sponsors, marketing, and attendees. With resourcefulness, drive, and a bit of imagination, you can keep a meetup group going and growing even when things go wrong. My biggest tip is to make sure you have backup. Find at least one other person with gumption to help you organize. That way, you spread the load, not take on everything yourself, keep your ideas fresh, and importantly, make sure your meetup keeps going into the future. And here are just some links, including the venue approval form that I mentioned earlier. Thank you. Thank you.