How to organize a local HN meetup?

7 points·Killah911··6 comments

I'd like to organize a local HN meetup in Melbourne, FL, but don't know if I can just go ahead and plan in on Meetup.com or if there's any "official" way of doing so...

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There's no official way, and it tends to be pretty hard to get a critical mass of people to attend. When I first started Hackers & Founders in Silicon Valley, it was 4 people and me in a bar.

I kept the meetup going for a couple of years, and as of last March we were at 500 members. Then, something happened this past year, and it grew to over 4,000 members.

Meetup.com is great for distribution. And, figure out where the closest Startup Digest is to you. Submit your events to them. They tend to pick up events like that.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ping me.

Follow my thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3039618

I just ask to see how many people we can attract and then I set up a group an FB or Meetup.

Meetup is great for growing the event. However, I would suggest getting a few core people together to it started. One way of doing it is to go around other events and invite interesting people in person.

Apply the principles of Customer Development. It will be a good exercise.

I know that Rusty Klophaus (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RKlophaus) has done a really good job organizing the DC/MD Hacker News meetups.

He's got contact info in his profile, but the meat behind it seems to be Meetup + HN post and a request for upvotes.

Rusty has done an amazing job, and he's a great guy.

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