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In September 2001, Fletcher Johnson, an active member of the user group community, has contributed to build this document to ease the management of a user group at various levels.

Fletcher Johnson, Abbasolve

I have been working with xBase since 1982 or so when I worked on a CPM machine running dBase II. I have beta tested most versions of FoxPro and many dBase versions. In addition to speaking at dBase and Foxpro DevCons, I also teach programming classes for AppDev (www.AppDev.com) as well as general and advanced MIS courses at San Jose State University - School of Business. Abbasolve licenses software that is resold by my clients to end users around the world. Finally, I have been running the ...

Finding a meeting place

Ok, so you have (or are planning) a user group. Now you need to find a (new) place to meet. What are your options?

First, you need to determine how much space do you need. Having a meeting room with a capacity for 500 and only three members does not make sense. Conversely, you don't want too many people for your room either. But you need some idea of the maximum and minimum number of people you expect so you can pick a place accordingly. If you are starting a new group, planning on 2 - 25 is a good start.

If you are a smaller group, you may want to have two places. Use one for regular meetings and another for special meetings that might get a lot of PR.

Anyway, here are some ideas of places you can check out for possible meeting rooms. One thing to remember, if the room doesn't have any projection equipment, you will need at least two members who can volunteer to bring their projectors. And you will need to coordinate in case one or the other (or even both) can't make the meeting.

Libraries and other public facilities often provide rooms for people to use at no charge. Some groups meet in schools, I even attended a meeting that took place in a hospital meeting room.
Often, members work for companies (I say often since some work out of their house or are contractors.) Often these companies have meeting rooms that are available. Even better these rooms might already be equipped with projectors so that you don't have to worry about how you will make your presentations.
If you are near a Microsoft office (and who isn't these days....) you can check to see if they make some meeting rooms available to user groups. Here is the rule. If they allow any user group to meet there, you can meet there too (as long as there is not a usage conflict.) If you have problems getting them to "see the light" send me an email and I will give you more information on how to convince them. I will not post ithere because things change and my response will reflect those changes. I don't know of any MS facility that charges for this type of usage.
If your club charges dues, you might even be able to afford to pay some money for a meeting room. Again there are a number of clubs that have meeting facilities that are rented in this manner.
Restaurants (and other similar establishments) often have meeting rooms that are available. In some cases, they charge, in others they don't. If most of your members order food from the establishment, then the establishment is less likely to require a fee. In on case, each member is required to purchase a minimum amount of food (say $5.00 per person even if they don't eat anything.) While these can be good locations for evening meetings (no need to race to eat before the meeting) you have to be careful about noises from the rest of the restaurant, facilities, and the possibility that you might be pre-empted by a larger group.

Finding Speakers

There are a number of ways to get speakers for your meetings. If you need ideas on how to plan your meetings (vs. get speakers) look at the "Planning Meetings" topic.

Your best source of speakers is in your own user group. But make sure that the members who will make the presentations have some experience doing so before you put them stage center for an hour or more. In some cases, you might get two members to work together on a presenation taking advantage of a more polished presenter with a more technical resource.

But lets say you want some "new blood" in your group as well. Here are some ways to get new speakers.

Go to the List of Available Speakers topic above. There you will find a list of people who enjoy speaking at user groups. You may find some in or near your area. Depending on their background, you might contact some of them and see if they have any travel planned in the future and if so, will they be near your area. In some cases, it might not have an impact (other than time) for them to come to your meeting to do a presentation. I have spoken at a number of groups this way.
Post a message to the Universal Thread and other type messaging areas asking if there are any experienced speakers who might be in your area in a given month and week.
While members don't like hearing sales pitches, you might be able to get a technical person from a software vendor to come out and talk about either their tool or development issues involved with creating the program. Also, in some cases, a number of members can benefit by seeing demonstrations of some of the software that is available.

Planning Meetings

So now you have a meeting time and location. So what do you do in your meetings?

Identify the technological level of your users. Chances are there will be quite a range. Given this, you may want to start your meetings with a Question and Answer period. This is useful for a couple of reasons. The users who want to learn more can learn some basics and the more advanced users will have some buffer if they get caught in traffic, work, etc. But be prepared with some basic topics if the members are too shy or inexperienced to know what to ask.
Industry update. Take some time to talk about what is going on in the industry. Don't limit this to your user group sector of activities, but to the industry as a whole. There are many things going on outside that affect your developers. The Universal Thread is an excellent resource as the various magazines, web sites, etc.
Try to have some sort of a prepared main topic. Even if you have experience talking in front of groups, I strongly recommend organizations such as Toastmasters (www.toastmasters.org.) Different TM clubs are different, so try a few. While this may sound like I really want to push TM, it's not that. If the person doing the presentation does not have much skill (even though they think they do) then the users will often get bored, distracted, etc. If this happens, they tend not to come back.
Encourage members to help out in the opening Q&A. This will give you a chance to get some idea of their ability to make presentations. Once you feel comfortably that they will keep the members interested, see if you can get them to do one of the main presentations as well. Look to the topics comments for ideas on what you might present.
If you can, try to start the meeting by having everyone say their name. They might also indicate how they are involved in the community - a consultant, instructor, employee, manager, etc.
You might also want to give some time for people to discus employment options - people looking for work and/or job opportunities that may be available.
If you can, always try to have a spare copy of the latest magazines as well as some of the online magazines. This way, you can show newer members some of the available resources.
If you haven't already, make sure you have a web site. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it should at least have information about when and where you meet (with a map and written directions), what (if anything) members should bring, information on any admission fees that may be charged if they are not members, etc.

While you will find there to be many more tips on planning meetings, this should at least get you started.

Promoting your user group

You need to be able to promote your user group.

Make sure that your group is listed on the Universal Thread.
If there are other groups in your area, share information about your group with them and vice-versa
Try to get a vendor to come out and do a presentation for your group and have them send a notice of the presentation to all their registered users. This is usually a win-win situation.
Put on some sort of training. Many user groups have done this twice to great success.
Most papers will publish events such as User Group meetings for free. Contact them.
Need I say this.... Make sure you have a web site. Also, have some generic email IDs that can be redirected to whomever is responsible for being contacted. By having an email ID that can be forwarded, you don't have to worry about trying to update everyone with new IDs every time your officers change.

Scheduling meetings

Planning on when you want to meet can be tricky. Most clubs meet in the evening on weekdays, but might meet on weekends as well.

Usually, a club might meet on one day of a week on a given week of the month (for example, the second Thursday of each month.) You generally want to avoid meetings on Mondays (too many holidays) or meetings on the third or forth week of the month (you often have problems around Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

Most clubs start at 7:00 or 7:30pm depending on traffic, available food (at the meeting or near by), schedules of the members, etc. Most go for at least two hours, sometimes more.

Once you have a time to meet, you also want to plan out how your meeting will be run (do you have a question and answer period, etc.?) This is covered in the Planning Meetings Topic.

Starting a User Group

So you want to start a user group. What do you do, whats involved, is it like, really difficult? Not really.

To start a user group, all you need to do is to make the decision. Why would you do so? Because you may have realized that there are other developers out there who have a lot of knowledge and by forming a user group, you can all share this knowledge. Not only can you learn more from other members, but you can also get speakers to come to your meeting and share their knowledge as well.

You will find a number of tips & tricks you can use to get speakers, members, topics, etc. Make use of these to build your group and your knowledge. Not only will you benefit, but all your members will as well.

Some of the key tips and tricks to review are:

Finding a meeting place
Scheduling meetings
Planning Meetings
Finding Speakers

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