Tulsa Community Leadership Town Hall

In conjunction with Tulsa TechFest, a Tulsa Community Leadership Town Hall was held on Nov 11. Leaders from local user groups, Oklahoma City, Dallas. Northwest Arkansas and all sorts of other places were there, and it was great to see so many people coming together to work together.

The forum lasted about 2.5 hours, and was done in the fishbowl style. If you're not familiar with fishbowl sessions, they start with a short list of 4-5 topics. These topics can be chosen ahead or decided on there. Once topics are in place, there is 15 minutes of an idea marketplace, where attendees write ideas on sticky notes and place those notes under the topics. Attendees then spend a few minutes voting on the ideas they like, using sticker dots or something like that. The ideas with the most votes are the ones discussed. Discussion starts with four empty chairs in the front of the room, and three people fill three chairs. When a fourth person joins the group, one person must get up and leave (usually someone who has spoken already). To wind the session down, the moderator removes a chair every so often until there is only one left, and the person in it is the final speaker. A fishbowl discussion in action is below.

Here's a recap of what we talked about, with some commentary and resources thrown in by me. Ideas came quickly, so I didn't always note the speaker's name. If I don't have you listed next to your idea, ping me and I'll fix it.

Cultivating Local Speakers

A common problem for user groups is having a wide range of speakers, and sometimes it's difficult to get people who would be good speakers to actually volunteer to speak. Here are some ideas for encouraging users to transition from attendee to speaker.

• Vendors provide software licenses to a user or users, who then use the tools in a project. Users then give a talk on the project, and their reward is a license for that tool.
• Ask specific people to do talks on specific topics, especially "that guy". "That guy" is the one guy with a great deal of technical knowledge, and is interactive as an audience member. Ask them to do a talk on something they've shown they have a lot of expertise with.
• At the beginning of each meeting, have a lightning talk, which is 10-15 minutes on a specific subject, feature in a platform, tool, whatever. These types of talks go by a lot of names, the XAML group calls theirs "Blendlets", and another group calls theirs "Code Karaoke".
• Framework comparison smackdown. How do MVP and Web Forms stack up against each other? Crystal or SSRS?
• Ignite series of talks. Ignite talks are 5 minutes ling each, 20 slides, on a 15 second timer each.
• Additional resources for speakers include INETA's Community Speakers Bureau and local UG leader mailing lists.

My take:

• Extending the lightning talks idea, some user groups have entire meetings of lightning talks. Pittsburgh .NET held "5 guys with code", and Philly.NET had "15 minutes of fame". When BADNUG was solvent, we had a "Tools: Use one or be one" talk at the beginning of each meeting. Full sessions of lightning talks are a great way to fill in case a speaker can't attend at the last minute.
• Another event idea is hands-on labs. CMAP had one recently CMAP Hands-On Lab Group Invite. Content can be developed by the speaker, or speakers can grab labs from resources like Webcamps, VS 2010 Training Kit, Azure Boot Camps, the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit, and so on.
• It's great to share speakers between UGs. Doing so is fresh content for fresh faces.
• Mid-Atlantic Developers group (http://midatlanticdevs.groups.live.com/)
• South Central UG Leaders group (http://southcentral.groups.live.com/)

Marketing the User Group / Boosting Declining Membership

These two topics were combined because they're pretty similar.

• Caleb Jenkins stressed that a lot of UGs decline because they are inconsistent in their meeting locations, or even if the meeting is on. Consistency of location, time and having the meeting is key. If there is no speaker, fill with a fishbowl or open spaces.
• Luke Crouch said open source projects fizzle for a similar reason-there is no consistency in releases. It's important to commit to a release cycle and stick to it, even if there are bugs.
• Luke also said sometimes combining user groups can breathe a lot of life back into them. In Tulsa, there was a Python, PHP and Ruby user group, all of which were combined into Tulsa Web Devs.
• Even permanent location changes lose members, some people just don't want to drive very far.
• Content is also very important. Not just keeping content fresh, but also having a good balance of beginner and advanced topics. This is where lightning talks at the beginning of each meeting are useful-have a beginner talk paired with an advanced one, and switch off as to which level gets the main talk. Or, if you can, have a beginner talk in one room and an advanced talk in the other.
• According to INETA, there are about 750,000 developers in the Central US region, but only about 20,000 are active in user groups. User groups can't expect to win the majority of the developer community. User groups are not for everyone, just for the people who care about their career. Focus on the enlightened ones.
• The average user group attendance at an INETA group is 35.
• User groups are only partially about content. They are also about networking, and building the connective tissue between developers.
• How to recruit kids in school? Most high schools and colleges have student groups that are very similar to the idea of a user group, and they'd love some real world experience. Get involved with these groups, and let them know about your UG. AITP has recruiters on campuses, and they do a good job of building membership that way. College students can get intimidated with some of the topics, so try and keep the content friendly for them, too.
• Oklahoma City has a UG umbrella organization, which helps support and cross-pollinate between the UGs. Tulsa is building one, called NEOTech (Northeast Oklahoma Technology).
• To help grow the size of the group, build a sense of community. Have a higher purposes, too, like participating in Give Camps, adopting an open source project, or helping one non-profit on an ongoing basis.
• Leaders need to know their UG members, and not let things get too clique-y at meetings or after meetings. This helps bring new members into the fold.
• Chemistry between the members is important. Care about the people who show up.
• Luke Crouch closed out with some additional ideas on cross-pollination between UGs of different technologies and for student groups. UGs of different stripes can adopt projects together and learn from one another. Mentor students by doing things they'll be interested in, like what can you do with the Twitter API? Use pair programming between the UG members or mentors and students.

My take:

• We hear you on the "people don't want to drive" concept. In Pittsburgh, people have a mental boundary at a river or mountain. With three rivers, 34 bridges and six sets of tunnels, that is a lot of mental barriers. But Pittsburgh .NET still attracts an above average crowd. The key formula is Value >> Inconvenience.
• There was some talk of "it's just one night a month", but it's really not. It's one night, in addition to late nights pushing out the next release or troubleshooting. It's one night where the kids may also have soccer or dance. It's one night in addition to a lot of other things that happen. I don't think it's fair to judge people who drift away as being uncommitted, they may me more committed to something else in their lives. The UG is competing for attention, and this puts the onus on the UG to provide enough value to justify not being part of something else. Yes, there are plenty of people who just wan tot go home and veg out every night. There's no helping them.
• We found at MADCLS that group size ranges from 5-10 to over 100 per meeting in the region. Having a small group has its own challenges, but it's not something to get a complex over. It's probably a tight-knit group, and you can leverage that to do some cool things that larger groups would have a hard time doing as a whole, like adopting an open source project.
• Richmond and Pittsburgh also have UG umbrella organizations that have helped the user groups in those cites grow. The Pittsburgh organization is the highly regarded Pittsburgh Technology Council.

Hackfests/Barcamps/Ignites

The idea was to explore alternative conference ideas, to engage attendees in different ways.

• Pick a theme for a day, and pair program. Switch pairs throughout the day.
• Security B-sides event. Started as at Black Hat or DevConn in Las Vegas. B-sides are un-conference conferences. It's an all day conference with no vendor speakers. There are sponsors who participate as participants, but there are no sales pitches or tables. B-sides are all day conferences. TEDx conferences fit this same model.
• Have a half-day or all day event in two rooms. In one room, have longer scheduled talks, and in the other, do lightning rounds all day. Post topic ideas ahead of time and have attendees elect the topics in advance.
• Include ignite talks, as above
• Tulsa Startup Weekend. People came together and pitched startup ideas. The top ideas were adopted and hashed out. Several of the attendees were building businesses from the ideas at this event. Oklahoma City has OKC CoCo, which brought all the Oklahoma City UG leaders together for a working lunch.
• For cross-pollination between events, UGs should promote other UGs and their events in their meetings and events.
• The Joomla project has periodic hackfests known as "pizza, bugs and code", where groups around the world meet on the same day to hit certain priorities in the issue tracker. They run all weekend, until midnight Sunday.
• Barcamps are sessions slides, there are loose rules governing the meeting. All first time attendees will speak, and you vote with your feet.

My take:

• The website for Security B-Sides is http://www.securitybsides.com/w/page/12194138/BSides.
• The OKC CoCo website is http://okccoco.com/.
• Pittsburgh has Alpha Lab, which has events similar to Startup Weekend, and has a successful track record of launching companies.
• GANG does an excellent job of promoting other UGs and events in the area. Actually, the entire Heartland region is good at promoting one another. They have a tab on their website specifically for other groups (http://migang.org/OtherGroups.aspx) and their meeting materials include upcoming events and meetings in the region.

Central tool for event planning

• In UG and event materials, include listings of other UGs.
• We assume everyone who would like to come to our events is on the Internet and is using it to find events. This is not always the case.
• I brought up Community Megaphone, which not everyone had heard of. Besides the website, it has an API and an OData feed so you can localize event listings to your area.
• Community Megaphone is good, but something even more centralized is needed. An event needs to be submitted to Community Megaphone, tickets on EventBrite, etc. UGSS was good for that.

My take:

• User groups are the best way to promote other user groups.
• Any metatool is going to to become unwieldy. User Group Support Services, while having good intentions, is difficult to work with.
• This sounds like a great community project! Let's build or extend a CMS that can handle event announcements, registration, check-in and awards. This would be cool. There are a lot of projects already begun on this vein, these can be upgraded/extended.

What should sponsors get?

This idea was originally to try and figure out how UGs could approach sponsors, and what to promise them. I turned the tables a little bit and explained how sponsors work and what sponsors expected to get from the UGs.

• Although UGs are 501(c)(3) organizations (if even that organized), they are a business and need to be treated as such. They need planning and professionalism to be done well.
• Staffing firms wand promotion of themselves and to announce open positions.
• Invite sponsors to give lightning talks about their products. One example was a lightning talk about interviewing skills from a recruiter.
• Vendors want their product promoted, most of all.
• UGs should have a solid plan, with tiered sponsorship levels.
• Sponsors shouldn't be sporadic in their support, don't make UGs have to ask every year. Please commit to multiple year sponsorships.
• Some companies will match employee contributions to 501(c)(3) organizations, and your UG may be eligible.

My input:

• ComponentOne has a strong commitment to the community, we're happy to be your partner.
• The thoughts on sponsorship range from UGs who feel they are tainted for taking sponsorship, to those who are proud of how much sponsorship they have.
• By all means have a plan with what you need. Some groups only need swag and licenses, while some also need cash.
• Cash support is proportional to the size of the UG, based on both the size of your "active" members (the average meeting attendance) and the size of your mailing list.
• UGs with sponsors aren't The Chosen Ones. Just ask us. It's my job to bring ComponentOne love to user groups, email me and I'll get you in the fold. I took this job because I like this kind of stuff.
• The active members of a user group are our ideal market. You are exactly where we want to be, help us reach your members and everyone wins.
• We don't want you to sell us your mailing. That's bad for all sorts of reasons. Members don't like it, so we don't ask for it. But, include the sponsors in your emails to members.
• We're not making you beg every year, but we need you to tell us when your events are. There are about 350 INETA UGs in the US alone. That is a lot for us to watch. Plus, a lot of UGs aren't really good at updating their websites.
• Have a really good website, and don't be afraid to share the attendance at your meetings and on your mailing list.

My take:

• GANG does a great job with their sponsor prospectus.

Thanks to Jay Smith (of User Group Radio, seen below) and David Walker for organizing this event, and to everyone who participated, it was a great event. Much of what was said here I've heard in other similar sessions in other regions, so we're all in this together. I truly enjoyed meeting all of you and sharing ideas I travel a lot, and I look forward to coming back to the Tulsa and Oklahoma area again. If you have additional feedback, please add to the discussion in the comments below.