Hi! I'm resurrecting the Bordeaux user group (sout...

# kug-leads

[CLOVIS]

Hi! I'm resurrecting the Bordeaux user group (southwest France) that died during COVID. I have a place, and the material needed to record etc. However, I have never organized anything like this, so I'd love any tips/resources you have :)

[Alina Dolgikh [JB]]

Hi! Are there any specific challenges you’d like tips on?

[CLOVIS]

Mostly on how to spread the word: where to advertise the existence of the user group, how to find speakers.

Also, any "thing you would've liked to know when you started out" 🙂

[Alina Dolgikh [JB]]

Those are great questions! Many meetups are creating spaces on Meetup.com, and it works quite well for spreading the word, suggesting meetups to people nearby. You can also post on Twitter, and we will retweet it from the Kotlin account to boost visibility.

For finding speakers, people often start by looking within their community. Maybe the organizers of other meetups in France can suggest someone or even visit with a talk?

[CLOVIS]

I've heard good things about Meetup, but it seems that the cheapest plan is $30/month and, based on a 3-month meeting cadence, that would cost $90 that I would much prefer spending in foodstuffs…

Once we have the date, we will definitely announce via Twitter, I'll ping you when that happens 🙏 I'm in contact with the organizer of the Paris meetup, and he's ready to come, but also advised me to have someone local for the very first meetup, do you have related recommendations?

[Alina Dolgikh [JB]]

yeah, it’s paid… that’s a downside. JetBrains doesn’t provide monetary support for meetup.com but maybe you could find other partners.

I don’t have anyone in mind, but I can try and search!

[CLOVIS]

I am aware of other user groups using eventbrite, do you have any opinions on it?

[Alina Dolgikh [JB]]

Folks from the Prague Kotlin user group use it. I can ping them to know if anyone can share the experience

[CLOVIS]

Please do 🙏

[Alina Dolgikh [JB]]

Hi! Here is the feedback from Martin, one of the organizers of the group in Prague and a colleague of mine at JetBrains:
“Hii! The general experience is that Eventbrite is basically the same as Meetup.com and both are already paid for the general usage. Pretty similar in UI and usage, but I’d say Meetup is more spread and known rather than Eventbrite. On the other hand, many conferences and happenings use Eventbrite for ticketing.. from scratch, I’d personally go for meetup.com”

[CLOVIS]

I see. But Meetup is $30/month, and EventBrite is $9/month, that's quite the difference 😅

[shivthepro]

@CLOVIS

We use luma at KUG #chennai and many dev communities I know use it here.. Its free and its pretty good to use. Like wait list management, Questionare for the applicants and a manual/auto approval system for each event. Also a cool events calendar which will show the list of events.

[CLOVIS]

Thanks! I'll look into it

[shivthepro]

They also have a paid plan but for small communities the free plan should suffice !

https://lu.ma/pricing

[CLOVIS]

free up to 500 users/week! yeah that's not going to be reached 🤣