Re: [UG-ADMINS] Some Ideas for Spreading the Word

I've been running the Madison WI PHP Group for a while (7 years) and
this is what I'd suggest.

1) Changing from PHP to a general Programmer's User Group.  I wouldn't
do this because while you might get more people to come to your group,
it's less targeted and therefore less useful to everyone.  What would
likely happen is if a lot of people show up from .NET or Java then
that language will take over the meetup and you won't have a PHP Group
anymore.  Instead keep it as a PHP group, but you can broaden the
talks to other subjects of interest to PHP developers.  Some things
could be MySQL, Javascript, CSS, etc.

2) Less Frequent Meetings.  This isn't a bad idea.  I'd say do a
presentation every other month and on the off months have a social
meetup.  A dinner one might be too formal for some folks.  When we
have our social meetups we have it at a local bowling alley
bar/restaurant area.  People can get drinks, food or just come to
chat.  It's not a bar bar, so people under 21 can come and have soda
or whatnot.  Plus it has lots of big round tables that we can meet
around and chat.

3) Restricting Information Sources.  The rule of thumb is you should
have one homebase for your group.  This is the canonical place where
you post events.  It should have a way for people to subscribe,
ideally via e-mail and most likely RSVP.  I recommend Meetup.com which
costs money, but it's worth it.  Not only is meetup a good tool for
people to manage a group, but people who are looking for groups will
frequently go look for them on meetup.  Then once you post the event
on meetup and it sends e-mails to all your members then you can take
your link and tweet it out, post it on facebook and on php.net.  I've
gotten lots of members who found us though php.net.

When submitting to php.net I recommend submitting each event
individually instead of a reoccurring event.  Mainly because there is
no interface for updating or canceling your reoccurring events.  Each
month after you post your event on meetup, submit it to php.net.  The
subject should feature your city's name "Madison PHP Meetup Group" for
instance because that's all they see in the sidebar on the homepage.
Then in the body of the message you can paste the description for that
months meetup.

The most important thing is being consistent.  If people know that
every third Tuesday is the PHP meetup then they can figure out their
schedule and plan to come.  Consistent e-mails are also important,
fortunately meetup can do this automatically reminding people a week
before the event and such.

Cheers,
Andrew Shell

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Chris Tankersley <[email protected]> wrote:
> The last few months have been someone up and down for the UG, and I think
> it's because the members are at different levels of involvement. We have a
> few that are members of our FB page, our Google Groups, and actively watch
> our website. We have some that only do FB, some that only do the GG, and
> then almost none that follow in Twitter (which is understandable, I've
> gotten bad at updating it). The one company in the area that does heavy PHP
> work isn't interested in working with us really, despite some employees
> there wanting to join.
>
> I've been kicking around some ideas to maybe kickstart the group again.
>
> *Changing from PHP to a general Programmer's User Group*
> PHP is the underdog in the area, with most of the programmers being Java or
> .NET. While I'd like to keep everything PHP focused, a cross-language group
> might be better than nothing, correct? Has anyone else done this? Any
> thoughts?
>
> *Less Frequent Meetings*
> I've also thought about going from monthly to either bi-monthly or even
> quarterly, with one or two Eat and Greets in between. I might use something
> like Eventbrite to handle RSVPs.
>
> *Restricting Information Sources*
> Like I said, we have a website, a FB page, a Google Group, and a Twitter.
> Should we cut down? Are there any good services out there that allow me to
> update multiple sources? I'm not above building something if it helps.
>
> Thanks everyone!
>
> --
> Chris Tankersley
> http://ctankersley.com
> 419.785.6408
>