Organizer guide

Pick a topic with wide enough appeal to draw a broad audience and enough sponsors. It can be a language, a framework, a technology, an area of AI and so on.

Pick a name for your meetup too. Keep it short and easy to remember, and include the name of the city or the country it runs in, so people find it when they search. You may also want to register a domain. You don't need a site right away: point the domain at your community page on Meetabit instead.

Aim for 2-3 co-organizers. They share the workload and make sure one of you can always be at the meetup. On Meetabit, any organizer can add another from the community page.

Decide who your target audience is, then look for speakers and sponsors that appeal to them. Also decide whether the meetup is open to everyone or invite only. CTO meetups for current or former CTOs and a Hacker News meetup for active members of the site are two examples of invite only meetups.

A private community on Meetabit lets people request to join, and an organizer approves or declines each request.

The easiest format is to have a different sponsor company host each meetup. The sponsor provides the venue, food and drinks, and ideally one technical speaker.

Hold the events on weekday evenings, avoiding Fridays, when attendees may have other plans. 17:30-18:00 is a good time to start. Some people arrive a bit late, so aim to start the talks at 18:15. If you open at 17:30, food can be ready on arrival and finished after the talks. The other option is to have the food arrive after the talks.

Aim for 1-3 talks of 20-25 minutes each, with 5 minutes for questions. Tell the speakers about the timing in advance and remind them before their talk starts. With more than two talks, put a longer break between some of them, and leave time for socializing afterwards. You may also want to write a guide for speakers to share in advance. The one from HelsinkiJS makes a good reference.

Another option is the deep dive: book a single speaker who knows their topic really well and is willing to talk for 1-1.5 hours. The longer format allows more interaction with the audience and is worth trying if you want a different approach.

The key to running a successful tech meetup is a clear process you can follow. It cuts the time you spend on admin and leaves more for what you love: learning and building relationships.

To organize a meetup you need sponsor companies, speakers and attendees, and each needs its own queue. Meetabit keeps all three: you offer an event to a sponsor, who accepts or declines it, speakers propose talks to your community and attendees register for the event.

Take potential sponsors on a first come, first served basis. Plan only one meetup ahead and keep a regular cadence, such as every month, every two months or every three months. Prefer sponsors with central locations and venues big enough to host as many of your attendees as possible.

Once you have a sponsor, propose dates to them. Pick dates on which at least two organizers are available, so that someone can always be at the event to MC.

Once the date is set, reach out to potential speakers with that date. If a speaker can't make it, you can ask them again for a later one. Once at least 1-2 speakers are confirmed, publish the event.

Expect about a third of the people who register for a free event not to show up, so to fill every seat, take 50% more registrations than you have seats. Meetabit puts anyone past the event's capacity on a waiting list and moves them up when someone cancels, and it reminds attendees the day before, which prompts the ones who can't come to cancel.

If you ever run short of potential sponsors or speakers, reach out to people you know who may be able to help, ask your members or post about it on social media. Both sponsors and speakers can be found on short notice.

Promote the event through these channels, in order of preference:

• Your community's members, whom you can email from the members page on Meetabit
• Tech Tribes
• Relevant online communities, listed below
• Social media, primarily LinkedIn and perhaps Bluesky and X. Facebook is no longer a good channel

If you recorded the event, share the recording with the participants afterwards. On Meetabit you can add the recording and slides to each talk, and email the attendees from the event page. It is also a good chance to thank them for coming and to mention the next event if its date is set.

• koodiklinikka Slack for any tech events
• Witted Network Slack for any tech events
• Future Frontend Slack for frontend events
• DataTribe Discord for data events

You don't need one at the start, but once your community grows big enough, introduce a code of conduct. The one from HelsinkiJS makes a good reference.

• A series of posts on organizing tech meetups on the Toughbyte blog
• A podcast on running a tech meetup
• A video of a talk on running tech meetups
• A developer's guide to communities
• Third places and meetups
• 5 reasons to attend a meetup
• It's my first time at a meetup - how does it work?