Title: Team Chat Agenda for September 4, 2014 Author: Jen Published: September 2, 2014 Last modified: June 22, 2016 --- [ ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jenmylo/) [Jen](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jenmylo/) 5:39 pm _on_ September 2, 2014 Tags: [agenda ( 172 )](https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/agenda/), [meetups ( 119 )](https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/meetups-2/), [team chat ( 111 )](https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/team-chat/) # Team Chat Agenda for September 4, 2014 Thought I’d post it early this week so people could have a couple of days to think about things and write up ideas in advance. **Topic: MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our [Meetup Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/)./ other local events** * MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our [Meetup Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/). Attendance Tracking. Data, stats, we want them. Meetup.com has a tool built in to confirm attendance or say they didn’t show up. We’ll talk about how to ask organizers to start using this tool, and what can we/they do to make it a simple after-event task rather than a pain in the butt. Sign in sheets? A laptop or tablet with “check in” button when you come in? Let’s come up with a few ideas so we can start organizers on the path to reliable attendance data. (Since funding has to be based on something, and number of people that show up is usually the the something.) * Women-only Meetups. The meetup rules say meetups need to be open to everyone, regardless of things like gender, race, etc. We have done some workshops and trainings for just women in the past as part of a diversity initiative, and want to do more of those, because it helps to overcome issues of societal bias. However, now Seattle is doing women-only meetup events in the regular meetup group. I told Morgan, the organizer, to see what the attendees said about why they would come to those and not the main ones so we could get some data. This is a touchy thing. On one hand, overcoming societal bias, increasing diverse involvement, etc. On the other hand, not segregating, meetups are open to all. Let’s discuss this issue. * Clearing the membership rolls. We all know that the number of members in a meetup group is almost always a lie, especially if the group has been around a while. People move, change emails and can’t access the old account, join just to see what’s going on even though they are not local (or join to attend one meetup event when they are traveling). For the remote lurkers who aren’t local but just want to see what the group is up to, there’s not much we can do about that, since meetup.com doesn’t have a way to ‘watch’ a group rather than being a local member, but we could at least try to do an annual cleanup of people who joined but have no intention of ever coming to an event and possibly don’t even get the emails. Let’s figure out what a good threshold would be for inactivity (length of time with no activity) to trigger getting a “Hey, are you still interested in WordPress? What can we do that you might be interested in attending?” email. And at what point should we remove these people from the group so that we have realistic numbers (knowing they can rejoin at any time)? Why worry about this at all? Because groups with heavily inflated numbers look less and less effective at serving their communities, so getting more accurate ratios of what percentage of members are actually attending events will be helpful in identifying which group need more assistance. * Meetup Venue Budgets. Some meetups get free venues donated to the group, which is awesome, but some can’t seem to find them. In those cases we cover the venue costs out of the Foundation account. We need to have a general guideline about what is reasonable to pay for a venue based on number of attendees. Obviously we would have the wiggle room to take special situations into account, but there have been a couple of cities choosing venues that cost several hundred dollars to host 20-person meetups, which is a little excessive, so it would be good to have a general idea of what we think is reasonable/average for organizers to use as a starting point. * New Meetup Starter Packs. We’ve talked about doing these forever, keep not getting around to actually writing up the docs we want to include, signs, sizes, …. basically making an inventory and then assigning who is drafting the first version of each and putting together a timeline for completion. Let’s do that. Here’s an old post about it from May: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/05/01/meetup- starter-packs/ [#agenda](https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/agenda/), [#meetups-2](https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/meetups-2/), [#team-chat](https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/team-chat/) ### Share this: * [ Threads ](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/02/team-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014/?share=threads) * [ Mastodon ](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/02/team-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014/?share=mastodon) * [ Bluesky ](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/02/team-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014/?share=bluesky) * [ Facebook ](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/02/team-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014/?share=facebook) * [ X ](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/02/team-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014/?share=x) * [ LinkedIn ](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/02/team-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014/?share=linkedin) * [Login to Reply](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmake.wordpress.org%2Fcommunity%2F2014%2F09%2F02%2Fteam-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014%2F%23respond&locale=en_US) 1. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/873376107c21d7d985dbb1ffb33bd78dfea7c654d3bf80879cd71452e59f4d1f? s=32&d=mm&r=g) 2. [Dustin Filippini](https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustyf/) 6:10 pm _on_ September 2, 2014 3. I’ve never really saw a point to “cleaning up the members.” I’ve seen a lot of other local meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our [Meetup Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/). groups do this, but always wondered why is it necessary. I am a member of many groups that I have some interest in, but do not attend on a regular basis or have never attended. I just feel that some day, there may be a time I am free that night and may see a topic come up that I want to attend. I just felt it was more trouble to try to prune the groups and kicking out possible attendees than it would be worth. 4. * ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0913abf0260161c462261c85cc9a2c7161e9608dcc275190056be2f64ab8183e? s=32&d=mm&r=g) * [Tony Scott](https://profiles.wordpress.org/tonyscott/) 7:35 pm _on_ September 2, 2014 * I agree with Dustin on this point. 5. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e26b6b351ec163171493ffacbd45fec31b8d21fa706f87862a1c74082b691896? s=32&d=mm&r=g) 6. [Chris Koerner](https://profiles.wordpress.org/ckoerner/) 8:26 pm _on_ September 2, 2014 7. I can’t make the team chat (right in the middle of the work day for my primary non-WP related job, dang) but would like to add two cents. 8. As a local MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our [Meetup Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/). co-organizer, tracking membership and attendance is something I have never payed attention to in the past. We never had much reason to. RSVP’s are often inaccurate and folks always show up/don’t show up at the last minute. 9. Most of our agendas are pretty structured. Start at 6:30pm. Introductions, house keeping, main topic of the evening. We’re lucky if we get out by 8:30pm. After the main event, most people book it for the door (it’s a week night after all) and doing attendance after the fact would seem difficult. Maybe some sort of app that an organizer could use to quickly check in people? We go around the room at every meetup and ask folks to introduce themselves as we always have new faces. Maybe it could be part of introductions? How do you do it with out breaking the flow, you know what I mean? 10. Since joining the larger WordPress Meetup community, I’ve been listening and learning and better understand the importance of accurate tracking. 11. If cleaning up these ‘ghost’ members is easy and not time-consuming I’m all for it. The current Meetup tools don’t make it easy (one at a time it looks like). If it’s easy to ‘check-in’ folks? Sign me up. Anything else is going to feel like‘ work’ and I’m afraid won’t be too successful across the other groups. We’ll do our best in St. Louis. 🙂 12. That might be something to consider as you on-board existing groups. If this is going to be an expectation of co-organizers then maybe it should be part of the introduction? It’s not a big one to ask, but it could be helpful to outline responsibilities– attendance and membership tracking as one. 13. Another thing you have me thinking about is considering what constitutes ‘success’ for a meetup. Is it the number of people? A percentage of the total population in a metro area? A count of regular attendees? Nothing on Meetup really gives an accurate number of that. Folks can RSVP and even say they came! 14. To us the more important metrics are reviews and feedback. Thus far the reviews and feedback we receive are positive. The fun little chart ([http://www.meetup.com/stlwordpress/stats/members/?range=all](http://www.meetup.com/stlwordpress/stats/members/?range=all)) keeps going up-and-to-the-right. As a local organizer, those are the metrics I’m concerned with. Those who make the effort to show up have a good time, learn something new, and meet other people. 15. The further one gets from the foundation the harder it is to get folks interested in the numbers. The members of our community come for the information about WordPress. I don’t know how to get people interested in sign-ins or the like. I’d love to hear more suggestions on how to best approach this. 16. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc3ca2ce53deee2eed5d1525e8537096fd49dc9cf128c0c7b05ca8351ee7bbbf? s=32&d=mm&r=g) 17. [Alexander Gounder](https://profiles.wordpress.org/gounder/) 9:30 pm _on_ September 2, 2014 18. Before cleaning out members who don’t show up, it’s worth considering that larger the group size the better it’s reach through recommendations, common FB friends in the group and so on. 19. We did start marking no shows from those who RSVP, but unfortunately for us, it has rained really heavy on the days that we planned our last few meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our [Meetup Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/).. so can’t really blame the no shows, some do message saying they can’t come due to the rain. 20. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a23d41e1f66e28d54d8b05d586b466a79bdd1ab92e8a7cc04c8b2398409244b0? s=32&d=mm&r=g) 21. [Dee Teal](https://profiles.wordpress.org/thewebprincess/) 12:23 am _on_ September 5, 2014 22. As I can’t make the chat (it’s 5am local time for me, and… well… 5am) I would like to comment on the women only meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our [Meetup Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/). groups thing as I run a women only meetup here in Melbourne, Australia. 23. We have made a number of specific choices around this group. The sessions are run by women, the speakers are women but the event is attended by men and women( 80/20 gender split, usually). We have deliberately kept it as a meetup of the wider WPMelbourne group rather than split it off as its own thing, and we’re very direct that while it’s about women we don’t turn any one away, nor do we disallow the floor to anyone at discussion time. 24. As it’s part of the wider group, and because we’ve never wanted to ask people to identify their gender on meetup profiles we can only send updates to the whole group. This caused consternation initially particularly from the men about receiving‘ chick only’ mail. But with careful education of what we’re about and a plea for compassion about receiving an extra email a month, most everyone’s been totally gracious and accepting about the group (and the mailing list is over 1,000). Only one or two people have snarked about the group but happily they have changed their tune when we’ve had the opportunity to talk to them about what we’re doing and why we think it’s important. 25. It seems to be working well for us. We’ve seen a number of the women go on to speak at the wider developer group (whose gender balance is the polar opposite of ours) which for me is the primary purpose of creating the smaller group; to give women the confidence to step and contribute up on the larger, more intimidating stage and to join the discussion in a room full of developers… which can be pretty disconcerting even for forthright women like me. 26. On the cleaning up the list thing, I don’t take much notice of the length of the list, more on the number of attendees at meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally- organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis ( commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our [Meetup Organizer Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/)., especially as our room now costs us money relative to the size of the group. We have the same issues as everyone, dealing with high drop off between RSVPs and Attendees. We have strongly encouraged users to update their RSVPs and they’re getting pretty good at doing that, especially as we invariably have a waiting list. Realistically we can tell people to show up anyway as there are always no shows and we never actually get that full attendance anyway… so if anyone has ideas on how to manage that side of things that would be great… are you setting the cut off higher assuming you won’t get a full house at all? Or do you have other strategies? ### Leave a Reply 󠀁[Cancel reply](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/02/team-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014/?output_format=md#respond)󠁿 You must be [logged in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmake.wordpress.org%2Fcommunity%2F2014%2F09%2F02%2Fteam-chat-agenda-for-september-4-2014%2F&locale=en_US) to post a comment. # Post navigation [← WordPress.tv – Moderator issues thread for week 36](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/01/wordpress-tv-moderator-issues-thread-for-week-36/) [WordPress.tv moderator squad: Meetup recap →](https://make.wordpress.org/community/2014/09/04/wordpress-tv-moderator-squad-meetup-recap/)