How to Organize a Glowsticking.com Meetup

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Friday, 08 February 2008 09:26

Here are some tips and advice on throwing successful Glowsticking.com meetups.

Glowsticking.com meetup is one of the best ways for our members to interact with each other. Check out our media center for some great examples <a href="http://www.glowsticking.com/forums/index.php?dlcategory=10">here</a>. Once strangers get a bit more familiar with each other on the glowsticking.com forum/community, it can be beneficial to see if you can meet in real life. It's a great way to get to know each other better in person and share ideas.

Some of you will be lucky enough that dedicated members near you throw regular meetups and you can just attend, some of you may not. But don't panic if there aren't meetups around you at the moment, you can try to throw one yourself!! Here are some tips to help you get started:

the <a href="http://www.glowsticking.com/forums/Regional-Information-f18.html">Regional Information</a> section of the forum is where you would want to start. You can find out about meetup/party information near your region here, or just to see which glowsticking.com member is near you. Get familiar with this section, this is also where you will start organizing a meetup.

The key is to start small. If you have a couple of friends that like to glowstick, start hanging out with them and hold small practice sessions. Sometimes you may feel pretty alone as the only one that glowsticks around your area, but try making some friends on the glowsticking.com forum/community. Maybe you will find someone that are close enough to you to meet up. Become active on the forums, when you post more of your thoughts, the better people will be able to know you and the easier it is to become friends.

Rally up the for-sure-coming's. Once you and a couple of friends are comfortable with each other, and you know that they are pretty reliable (meaning that they don't flake out, they will show up at a meeup/hang out when they say they will)... then you will be ready to try and expand your meetup size. It's hard for a newcomer to make the first step to say, "yes I will definitely be there." without knowing who else is showing up. If you already have 3-4 people that are going for sure, it is much easier for someone new to just ask, "Can I join you guys, too?"

Setting the details. First discuss among you and your 2-3 friends when would be a good time for you guys to hold this meetup. Weekends or around holidays are usually a good time because that's when most people will be free. Once it's decided, post the date, time, and location in the <a href="http://www.glowsticking.com/forums/Regional-Information-f18.html">Regional Information</a> section as a new topic to invite others to join you.

As an option, to increase exposure and invite more people to your meetup (if you feel comfortable), try looking up people's usernames in your area in the regional information section of the forum and send them a mass PM inviting them to your meetup. Don't forget to include a link to the thread that you posted all the meetup informations in.

There is no perfect time. Try to avoid asking when would everyone like to meetup on the forums. If you have 5 people or more that are interested, it will become hard to coordinate the perfect time for everyone.

If you have a time already set for everyone, it will be much easier for someone that is interested to join you to make time, so they can try to show up. Without knowing when the meetup will happen, it's really hard to get any concrete yes or no's. Let's face it, just about everyone and anyone will be interested in meetups if they can make it. So let's skip the whole "Who's interested?" phase, and assume most people would. Then you can go straight to the "So who can actually make it?" phase.

Of course, if there are A LOT of interest, but most of them cannot make it to the pre-decided date for the meetup, feel free to propose a new date to see if the result can improve. Or just have a smaller meetup on the original date, and ask the others to try and determine a better date for the next bigger meetup.

Start planning early. Ideally, you will want to announce the meetup information early to give people enough time to make arrangements and set time aside to attend your meetup. Anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months ahead of time should be sufficient. The bigger the meetup, the more time you will need for the people interested.

I hope these tips will help you throw some successful meetups. Don't forget to take some pictures or videos so you can share it with the rest of the forum.

If you have other tips to contribute or would like to check out advise given by other forum members, go to the discussion thread <a href="http://www.glowsticking.com/forums/Dummies-guide-to-starting-a-meetup-t4872.html">here</a>.

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