For a technical user group, a meetup that provides little value in terms of learning about a technology or engaging in a technical discussion, that was a phenomenal turn out. We had 90% attendance (RSVP'ed). That goes to show that this team really is interested in seeing this user group succeed by contributing upfront in planning and establishing this group.

Thanks to all those who made it to the meetup and for your participation and recommendations on various topics.

We covered several topics including

  1. Topics and Speakers - Identify topics of interest and speakers for the following meetups. Potentially we will be looking at Openshift as our first technical meetup.
  2. Sponsors and location - Identify a more permanent neutral location to host the JBug. Currently we will continue to host these meetups at Red Hat but we will continue to look for a sponsor to host this event. Antoine mentioned LinkedIn as a possible location but will check with his contacts.
  3. Socializing BayArea JBUG - Key to a group like this to thrive is to make sure we have good participation and great topics to share with the community. Recommendations were made to create LinkedIn Group [1], facebook [2], twitter account, youtube channel & google+ group.
  4. Meetup Format - Start with first monday of every month and as the team grows we can re-asses what's ideal for the group. Meetups to potentially start @ 6:30 PM for snacks and networking till 7:00 PM. Depending on the presentation, we could have a 30 min  - 1hr presentation followed by 30min Q & A.
  5. Upcoming events - As I mentioned during the meetup, there is an Openshift workshop coming up on Feb 19th that's open to anyone free of charge hosted by Red Hat. If you are interested, feel free to signup and join [3].

 

I thought the participation was great and I was glad to see the eagerness to get things started. I am always looking for ideas to make this user group more relevant to its participants and any suggestions along those lines are always welcome. Also anytime you have ideas about either topics or speakers please send them my way.

We took a few pictures during the meetup that I'll be posting shortly. Thanks for the pictures Sudheer!

Looking forward to our first technical meetup. Stay tuned for more details.

 

Regards,

Uday

 

[1] http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Bay-Area-JBoss-User-Group-6614900

[2] https://www.facebook.com/groups/bayareajbug

[3] https://engage.redhat.com/content/PaaS-workshop-registration-s-201312290401