Starting a Meetup Group

In February 2014, after moving to Manhattan and being unable to find a New York City network for Women Who Code (WWCode), I decided to start one. Ten months later, we have a strong NYC network with over 1500 members. We’re growing by 50+ members a month and have no signs of losing steam.

What has contributed to our success?

We owe much of our success to our San Francisco-based parent organization. They made introductions to technology companies with whom they’d already built relationships. The Women Who Code brand was also a big advantage. Many of our members and partners already know about our organization, and thus are more likely to want to be involved. Not every meetup group will have a parent organization, so this is very unique.

Another important factor was having a co-founder. Starting a meetup group is, of course, a huge commitment. With a co-founder, we can split a lot of the work required to organize hosts, speakers, and all the email correspondence that comes along with starting a network.

A strong and committed membership base has been vital. Our members want to be involved and help. Of course, organizing volunteers (we prefer to call them event organizers) is a lot of work, and luckily my co-founder is great at this. She quickly scouted event organizers to run our Front-End Developer Study Group, which is a popular weekly event.

What are our biggest challenges?

Finding hosts

With up to six events a month, finding organizations to host our events is possibly the most challenging aspect of running our meetup group.

We found the host for our first event by approaching the organizer of another meetup group, Luke Melia of Ember NYC. He was generous and made several introductions to the CTOs of NYC-based companies. This helped us get the ball rolling.

Being a part of the wider Women Who Code network has obviously helped. We get many introductions and leads from our parent organization, our advisor Sasha Laundy, and affiliated networks. Our members also help us find hosts—usually their employers or friends.

Being part of the WWCode organization combined with our large membership means many organizations approach us to host. While we welcome this, we tread carefully. For instance, recruiting agencies and for-profit educational institutions often want to host us. We always give them a shot, but we ensure our members aren’t being targeted too heavily. Additionally, we have to be picky about space. If the wifi was unavailable for most of the meetup or the environment was simply not conducive to productivity, we won’t have an event there again.

Cold calling, mainly on Twitter, is something we often do. We send tweets to CTOs, recruiters, and software engineers at various companies. This is most successful if the organization has special diversity initiatives. For example, the WWCode CEO alerted us to the Fog Creek Fellowship. We sent a tweet to a top recruiter there and quickly booked them for a Lightning Talks event. However, we’re not always this lucky. Tweets sometimes go unanswered and we move on.

Joel Spolsky gave an entertaining presentation at the Lightning Talks that Fog Creek hosted

LinkedIn has more recently proven to be an important resource. Both my co-founder and I get lots of messages from recruiters. If the recruiter works at a technology company (versus a recruiting agency), then we ask if they might be interested in hosting an event for WWCode. While this tactic has only worked 15% of the time, it’s garnered important partners like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Finding speakers

Finding speakers is similar to finding hosts. We find speakers through our parent organization, who often recommend potential speakers or make introductions. We also encourage our members to speak, especially those with interesting side projects or aspirations to become speakers. We always invite our hosts to have someone from their organization speak. We do our best to keep tabs on people we read about or meet at conferences or other meetups, particular those that are NY-based. And sometimes women approach us to speak at our events.

In addition, our hosts have been instrumental in finding speakers. For example, last Fall we teamed up with Condé Nast for a panel called “Finding Your Voice and Bringing Ideas to Life.” They found the moderator and most of the panelists.

Some tips

  • Get to know your meetup attendees. I ask about the type of programming they’re doing, their interests, their personal projects, and if they have any feedback.
  • Find a co-founder if at all possible to share responsibilities.
  • Fill up your meetup calendar with events at least six months out. This gives the impression that your group is active and helps potential members determine if the group is right for them.
  • Book hosts well ahead of time. There’s nothing more stressful than trying to find a host for an event that’s just a few days away.
  • Always have food at your events. Otherwise, people will arrive late or leave early to get dinner.
  • Open up RSVPs about 20 days before the date of your event. We made the mistake of allowing people to register for all of the events on our calendar, including those six months out. These people simply forgot about the events, resulting in lower attendance rates.
  • Do a head count at every event to find patterns and determine your average attendance rate. 50% is typical for us, but it also depends on the host. A meetup at Facebook or Fog Creek will have a higher attendance rate than one at a lesser known organization. We also found that our attendance rates dip in the Fall and Winter, probably due to the colder weather and shorter days.
  • When approaching potential hosts, keep your email message short and to the point. We have a standard template that includes the requirements for hosting (space, food, and internet for 20–50 women), a list of upcoming events that need hosts, and a sample schedule.

Starting the Women Who Code NYC network is perhaps the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had. It’s a lot of work and while it can be tiresome, helping women improve their programming and tech skills is amazing. I’ve learned a lot about time management and event organization, and have met amazing people along the way.