meetup

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Revision as of 15:50, 19 September 2008 by Tantek (talk | contribs) (added more on purpose, FAQ using Q&A between csarven and tantek in IRC)
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microformats weekly meetup events

A regular source of microformats events.

Weekly Meetup

The community and adoption have grown considerably over the last year, and news of adoptions (and once in a while challenges) come up frequently enough (at least once a week) that there are no shortage of new topics to discuss on a weekly basis. See purpose for more.

Organize a weekly meetup!

By making this a regular (every Tuesday) event, people know it is happening regularly and can thus come whichever ones are convenient for them, and not worry about missing any one in particular.

Cities where weekly meetup events are held, sorted alphabetically:

London

In London, Tuesdays at 7:30pm worked well.

Interested in general for London:

Possible locations:

  • ...

Past London venues:

San Francisco

From having informally asked a few folks in the SF area and on IRC it seems Tuesdays at 6:30pm work best, with a rotating venue to keep it interesting.

Additional suggested SF venues (suggester). Add your opinions and more suggestions:

  • Osha Thai on 2nd st.
  • Thirsty Bear
  • Mel's Diner
    • +0 hard to order healthy here, but the food mostly tastes good, and can probably get seating for a decent crowd at 6:30pm - Tantek
  • Naan & Chutney on Haight st. (Eran Globen)
  • ...

Past SF venues. We'll reuse these at some point I'm sure.

Other Cities

I encourage folks to organize meetup dinners wherever there is sufficient local critical mass. Once you start one, add another section for your city above this "Other Cities" section, and list suggested venues, past venues with links to meetup event pages etc.

There has been some interest expressed in organizing dinners in the following cities. Add yourself and/or contact the people listed and make it happen!

Organize a weekly meetup

Anyone can organize a microformats weekly meetup!

At a minimum, all you need is:

  1. At least one other person that commits to go (so at least you know you'll have a good conversation about microformats with at least one person).
  2. A location

And organizing a weekly meetup requires you to at a minimum:

  1. Pick a location
  2. Announce it (location at 18:30, Tuesday) on various event sites and notification services like Twitter etc.

That's it. If you prefer a step-by-step list of instructions and details, to remove nearly all doubt, here you go:

  1. Pick a location
    • Ask folks on IRC if they have any suggested locations.
    • Consider locations that are easy for a variety of people to transit to.
    • Consider a new location to keep it interesting.
  2. Create event pages
    • Create specific event page on microformats.org wiki.
      • Edit the events page and copy/paste the previous week's weekly meetup event, updating the date and location and commenting out the URLs.
      • Click on the previous weekly meetup event link, edit, select all, copy all the source, go back back.
      • Click on the (currently red) new weekly meetup event link, paste, and make the following edits:
        • update all the URLs
        • update all the dates
        • comment out the ;Web section in details section
        • clear out past attendees, photos, notes
        • update the location specific tags, remove the previous upcoming event tag
    • Copy that specific event page URL and
    • Create a public Pownce event with that wiki URL
      • what's happening? microformats weekly meetup dinner!
      • where? that location you chose
      • 6:30 PM on ....
    • Create an upcoming event with wiki + Pownce URLs
    • Just after creating the event, Upcoming gives you the option to "upload an official photo or image", click that link and upload http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3216/2836380076_9251390ded.jpg, making it the official photo for the event. Thanks to Cindy Li for the cool microformats meetup graphic!.
    • RSVP to the public Pownce event with "attending" and add the upcoming URL.
    • Update the microformats wiki event page with Pownce and upcoming URLs, and upcoming: event specific tag
    • Update the microformats wiki events page with the Pownce URL
  3. Announce it
    • Tweet the Pownce event
    • Add the upcoming event to various groups, add tags to it.
    • On the day of the event, post a reminder in the morning (to Twitter etc.), and again an hour before the event.
    • Afterwards post a thank you note thanking those that attended.

purpose

In addition to providing a convenient forum for community members to get together once in a while and talk about the latest news about microformats, the weekly meetups serve many good ends.

Perhaps most importantly, weekly meetups really help communication and community. People that have met in person usually treat each other nicer online, thus very much help encourage everyone to be nice in IRC, mailing lists etc.

FAQ

Perhaps move to weekly-meetup-faq if this section gets too big.

general talk

  • Q: Do you just talk in general about microformats?
  • A: As there's been new people at every microformat meetup, there's almost always at least some general talk about microformats.

newcomers vs detail

  • Q: How do you handle newcomers and at the same time get into detailed stuff?
  • A: Usually there are multiple conversations going, so there's almost always a good conversation to participate in. Also, it helps everyone to talk with newcomers and get fresh perspectives, as well as practiced at effectively communicating what microformats are, benefits, how to use etc.

existing issues

  • Q: Do you try to solve some existing issues?
  • A: We have discussed existing issues in some past meetups. Often divisive or controversial topics are much easier to discuss and understand multiple perspectives on in person. For example, Ben Ward and Tantek have made some good progress on understanding various perspectives on value-excerption-brainstorming and are optimistic about making progress on related issues.

notes

  • Q: Do you take notes?
  • A: Everyone is encouraged to take notes and contribute aspects of conversations, topics etc. on the wiki page for the meetup.

related

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