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Just some quick words of encouragement for #datascience #meetup organizers. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel with new talks every time. In fact, I think you should lower the bar.
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By lowering the bar, I mean that you should realize that people naturally want to meetup, and that you don’t have to have a fancy speaker every time. There are a lot of other activities you can do in a meetup.
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1. 1. Watch a video together. @pdxrlang did a watch party for the GT introduction video, where we watched the video and discussed it afterwards.
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2. Lightning talks. Always a good one. Pick a topic and give people time to prepare short 5-10 minute talks. This takes the pressure off everyone.
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3. Reuse material from other talks/workshops. There is a ton of good material out there. For example: I have lots of workshops and talks here: laderast.github.io/
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4. Set the stage for a discussion. Sometimes you have to only bring a cool code example and questions.
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5. Do a Q&A session on a topic where members ask questions ahead of time. Ask members to try and tackle a question apiece.
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6. Team up with other meetups! Invite people from other meetups for joint topics and discussions.
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As an organizer, you do not need to take the burden of organizing by yourself. Other people naturally want to help. I think the key is making it easy to contribute, and setting expectations.
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Anyhow, I'd love to hear any other suggestions for low-key meetup activities.