If it dies or goes slow or whatever so be it, but even if we get one great event every so now and then it would be a benefit.

One word of warning if I may. If organising the event becomes a big deal, and you become heavily emotionally invested in it, you might find it doesn’t produce sufficient return (emotionally, financially, and otherwise) to be viable in the long run. There’s always a risk with enthusiastic organisers that they create something which can’t be sustained, either by themselves or others.

When starting the event, I tried to keep it casual, low impact, and most importantly, little work to organise. The idea was that anyone could step into the void as easily as possible when I left.

For example, inviting new and great speakers every month is a full time job, it’ll start taking a lot of time once you get through the first few willing volunteers. It might even be an idea to string out those first few speakers over a few months.

I think it would be a shame if the meetups were to really fly for a few months and then lose momentum because the initial speed was unsustainable.

Anyway, I think I’ve gotten my point across now, so onto other topics…

Promotion

The word seems to be spreading. People seem to be finding out about it. One good thing that I didn’t really get right is a mailing list. It’d be a helpful tool to be able to broadcast email to people to promote the mailings.

The google group is more of a discussion list, where anyone can post. Something broadcast only would probably be good. You could add everyone who registers to the list after each event.

Another nice one would be SMS reminders. There’s a few folk in Cape Town in the SMS business. Grant Fleming at Fontera might be interested, you can mention my name if you speak to him. Or maybe better, just invite him along first, and see how you go. He’s a very switched on guy.

Oh, side note, Rob at Butlers might be interested in helping out with catering. I know he’s keen to get his excellent product out to the movers and shakers in town. Where better to find switched on young Captonians than a WP Meetup? I can send you his info if you need it.

It would be sweet to get little cards printed with the awesome logo and the url. They’d make for nice handouts at other events, at the event itself, and so on. Something like the moo cards maybe.

Well, I’ve talked a lot about not taking on too much work, and now I’m making a ton more suggestions, so here endeth this installment from me.