>> Hi, I'm Jessica Deen.
>> I'm Chloe Condon.
>> And this is The Open Source Show.
>> I think the key is just to bring people
together and get them away from
the computer and share ideas.
I really believe in collaborative development
and just openness and sharing between engineers.
>> Microsoft being here really
shows that they care for open source,
not just by giving away the little freebie and swag,
but answering the questions,
having those technical engineers here that can answer
the questions and connect the open
source community to Microsoft.
>> A lot of the learning and the quantum
leaps that you can make the little connections
come when you're face to face,
come when you're actually seeing
someone talk about something they're passionate about,
come when you have a
random conversation with someone in the hallway.
>> Hi, I'm Jessica Deen,
and you're watching The Open Source Show.
>> I'm Chloe Condon.
>> I'm a Developer who builds communities for a living.
>> I'm a Developer Evangelist who also builds
community and creates content for a living.
>> So, about building content and
creating meetup events and different community events,
what would you say are three things for getting started?
Or how to start doing that?
Can you explain the meetup world?
>> Yeah. I would say, probably
the three top things for
me are: make sure you ask for help,
have a good community that's helping you,
make your meetup fun and exciting.
That can be with branding.
We'll go into that a little later.
Then, also making sure that
your attendees are having fun.
>> Absolutely. No one wants to go to an event and
fall asleep and sit in the back row.
So, you want it to be fun and engaging.
But how do you make it fun?
How do you ensure that
those who attend are going to enjoy your event?
>> I would say, the short answer to that,
my three go-tos are: no pizza,
no warm beer, and also, no pitches.
>> So, and then, sorry, you said also no pitches, right?
>> No pitches.
>> So, that sales-y kind of content, right?
>> The last thing,
seeing a very interesting
technical demo is always wonderful.
But when it comes to, 'and now,
we'll show you how we do it this
way' and do a whole walk through of your product,
never fun for a conference or for a meetup.
>> Yeah. So, I find
the same experience when I go and speak at meetups.
I'll usually try to do a technical demo,
but then, I'll throw some humor in it.
Like, one of my most popular demos,
I borrowed from Lachie Evenson from the Helm team,
and he wrote a Croc Hunter.
So, it's all written in Go.
So, I pretty much ask everyone in the audience,
do you now want to become a crocodile hunter?
So, you can learn,
but then, you can also have fun.
So, that seems to be very well-received.
You mention the technical demos, how would you also,
if you are trying to have this engaging,
fun event but you're also showing a technical demo,
how can you really ensure that you are still having
this mix of humor and excitement and energy,
and then, still also, by the way,
this is deeply technical,
we want to learn something,
how can you really balance that?
>> Well, first of all, make sure that the Wi-Fi works.
I've definitely seen live
technical demos where the Wi-Fi goes out,
or pre-record it in
the event that the Wi-Fi does not work.
>> Fun fact on that, I actually have.
So, I'm known for #NoClickyClicky
because I love living in my terminal.
So, I actually have an alias in my terminal that says
bad Wi-Fi for if everything
breaks and I switch to doing my demo local.
>> That is so smart.
>> But I've had to create that
because when the events don't have stable Wi-Fi,
then, oh, well, sorry, we have to switch this.
>> Exactly.
>> So, yeah. Having good Wi-Fi,
and then, sorry, what were some other ones?
>> I think it's really important to
also have some entertaining aspects.
So, for example, at Sentry Scouts,
we do PowerPoint karaoke to warm up the audience.
I come from the theater world,
so I'm used to a warm up person
coming out and telling a couple jokes.
So, for us, that's really our way to wake everybody up,
get everybody excited for the event,
present some presentation in
front of PowerPoint slides they've never seen before.
There's a really great video of Kate McKinnon
from SNL doing that,
if you are looking for a good example.
>> I now need to go watch this.
>> Yes, exactly. I think at the end of the day,
you really have to remember,
these people have been working 9:00 to 5:00,
sometimes 11:00 to 8:00.
They really don't want to go to a boring,
non-interesting meetup at the end of the day.
>> Absolutely. Now, we've
talked about key practices with meetups,
but how do you also find meetups?
We have so many of them.
There's Twitter. You can search in any day of the week,
it seems like there's going to be a meetup probably,
especially in San Francisco.
How can you really juggle that and
figure out where you should invest your time?
>> I think a lot of it is word of mouth.
A lot of people will tweet out and say,
hey, I'm in San Francisco for the day.
Where should I go?
I'm like, please, come to Sentry Scouts,
if it's happening that week.
I think also meetup.com
is a really great way to discover meetups.
We had someone recently come to it and said,
I was just browsing on Meetup and found this tonight.
I was choosing between this and another one.
Yours is camp-themed and has s'mores,
so I definitely came to this one.
>> I would always choose s'mores.
>> Exactly. >> I love camping.
>> We have Pop-Tarts.
>> Okay. So, we've talked still
about that with meetups and
now how you can search on Twitter,
but you keep also mentioning Sentry Scouts.
So, you created their meetup.
Can you tell us a little bit about what went into that,
what Sentry Scouts is, and just explain?
>> Yeah. So, as I mentioned before,
I come from the theater world,
so I'm very used to going to
events and being entertained.
So, when I made this transition and
went from going to see musical theater,
and then, going to a meetup,
it was a night and day difference.
So, I wanted to make sure we're doing a couple things.
The main goal of Sentry Scouts
was to engage with the community.
We're an open source company,
so we rotate the topics every month.
That can be anything from DevOps to UX
to we're doing an arts and technology meetup.
So, making sure that the content is relevant.
We also gamified it.
>> Okay
>> Commemorative patches and stickers for each event.
>> So that's going back to the branding you said earlier.
>> Exactly.
>> Nice.
>> So, it's like a collect them all Pokemon,
150 Pokemon, although there's a lot more Pokemon now.
>> Yeah. I think, actually, we
have some footage of some of
your Sentry Scouts meetups and events.
>> Yeah.
>> Awesome. So, let's check that out.
Just to recap, can you just go over
the top three things if they're looking to get started,
either creating a meetup, attending meetups,
getting involved in community,
would be three takeaways?
>> So, ask for help.
I know it's really tempting to take
on a project and do it all yourself,
but you really need the community or coworkers,
in my case, to help along with that.
I would say, put your own spin on it,
do some fun branding or
gamification of it just
to make sure people come back because again,
you can go to a meetup any night of the week.
What's going to bring them back to your meetup?
>> Personalize it and really,
get that investment with emotional investment,
but also time and energy.
>> Exactly. Then, finally,
I would say, remember that engineers are people too.
They love to laugh, they love to have fun.
I always preface all my talks and all my events with,
I make a lot of dad jokes I'm really sorry. Please laugh.
>> Well, and that's good because you're getting
the crowd excited and invested.
They can feed off of your energy,
but then, you can do the same.
So, it becomes this one giant party
where everyone can have fun.
>> We also have a giant squirrel costume
at our event, so usually,
that gets people a little loosened up
to take pictures with a giant squirrel.
>> If you want to learn more about
community and meetups and how to get started,
you can always check out some of the links down below.
Thank you, everyone, and have a great day.
>> Good meetups have community, strong culture,
respects, interesting topics, diverse crowd,
and free drinks afterwards.