Start A Meetup: Different type of formats you can have for your first event

If you want to organize your first event, there are several formats you can experiment with.

If you are new to organizing event I would suggest picking a format that would work with only 5 people joining. Starting your meetup can be a daunting task, which is why this guide breakdowns all the steps. So don’t be afraid to start small and learn along the way.

Below are some inspiration on which format to choose for your very first

Coffee, Drinks, Dinner

If you target to have up to 5 people joining your event, then a good start is to plan an event at a cafe, bar or restaurant. Make sure to pick a place where you know you can book a table or get one on the day.

One of the most successful meetup I know with this format is IndieBeers. It all started at the end of 2018 with a post on Indie Hackers. The first couple of IndieBeers meetup had 5-10 indie hackers gathering at a local pub to discuss what they were working on. From there, Charlie grew the meetup to 30+ people meeting every month. You can read more about the story behind IndieBeers here.

Get together

This is how we started Indie London.

I made a post on Indie Hackers at the beginning of 2018 asking if anyone was from London and keen to meet. We moved the conversation over chat and co-ordinated to find a date that worked for most (Doodle is your friend). We were lucky to have one of the attendees offer to host us in their office’s lounge for an evening.

On the day, 15 people showed up. We started by sharing who we were and what we were each working on. From then people split out into groups based on their interests and exchanged stories and advice throughout the evening.

Speakers

As the Indie London meetup grew in popularity we introduced speakers. At each event, we feature two speakers from our community sharing learnings from their journey as indie entrepreneurs.

This type of event can accommodate any number of attendees, although having a critical mass of 20-30 people might help to find speakers among your community.

The main challenge with the speaker format though is that you have to find a proper location to host your meetup. You want a quiet place with sufficient space and AV equipment for your speakers to present.

The Find speakers section of the guide gets into more detail on how to put such an event together.

Workshop

In November 2018, we hosted a workshop event for the Indie London community.

The purpose of a workshop is to get members of your community to work together on a concrete project. It is said that people create stronger bonds when working through challenges together.

During Indie London’s workshop day, attendees were put into teams and worked through different exercises about marketing, sales, and product development. We had a co-ordinator - Alex Teranda - that introduced each activity with a small presentation of what was expected from the teams. We had a few mentors join us during the day to help the teams complete the exercises. At the end of the day, all the teams presented their results and gave feedback to each other.

Summary

• Coffee / Drinks / Restaurant - 5-10 attendees – Location: Easy
• Get together - 5-20 attendees – Location: Medium (library, office lounge)
• Speakers - 20-100+ attendees – Location: Hard
• Workshop - 10-30 attendees - Location: Hard

If you found this useful, I share all my learnings about running events in the StartAMeetup.com guide.

Any questions, I'll be in the comments :)