24 \ August 2019 \ http://www.phparch.comFEATURECultivating a Community:
Five Things I’ve Learned Running a PHP User Group
Karl Hughes
In my first year of co-organizing the Chicago PHP User Group, I have learned a lot
and met many wonderful people. Combining insights from the community with
some of my own, I wanted to pass on some of the things I’ve learned about building
and maintaining a thriving technical community. Whether you’re an organizer or
attendee, I hope this gives you some insight into what goes on behind the scenes of
running a user group.In 2012, I moved to Chicago and
pretty quickly discovered Meetup.com^1.
As a recent graduate working for a small
company, I didn’t have many places to
turn to for mentorship or guidance;
software development user groups were
a great solution. Each week, I tried to
soak up as much knowledge as I could
about new technologies, frameworks,
and languages.
I first attended the PHP User Group
here in 2015^2 and quickly became a
regular at the monthly meetup. Over
time, I got to know the organizers, other
attendees, and many of the speakers.
Some of them became friends outside
the meetup, and I’ve even interviewed
and worked with some.
When one of the organizers moved
out of state in 2018, his co-organizer
approached me to ask if I’d be inter-
ested in helping out. I started speaking
at conferences in 2017^3 , so I felt pretty
confident in front of a group and was
excited for the opportunity to give
back to a community that helped me
grow from entry-level to engineering
manager over the past few years.
I don’t think I knew how much work
running a user group would be until
that first month.
1 Meetup.com: https://www.meetup.com
2 PHP User Group here in 2015:
https://meetup.com/Chicago-PHP-User-Group/
3 started speaking at conferences in 2017:
https://phpa.me/hughes-speaking-2018
We couldn’t find a sponsor to cover
food or host us, so I decided to cover
the first meetup out of pocket and hope
my employer would reimburse me.
Fortunately, we found a speaker, and a
good crowd showed up despite getting
things together at the last minute. After
that experience, I realized we would
need to spend a little more effort plan-
ning.
In the past year, my co-organizer,
Nick Escobedo^4 , and I have gone from
scrambling to get something together
each month to consistently planning
three to six months ahead. Building a
community is hard work, but it’s mean-
ingful and rewarding for those of us
who have benefited so much from it to
take our turn giving back.Learning to Be a Better
Organizer
Combining insights from the
community with some of my own, I
wanted to catalog some things user
group organizers and attendees should
be aware of as well as some tips I’ve
picked up over the past year:- Coordinating Between Many
Parties Is Hard
A typical meetup requires coordina-
tion between the organizers; the host
who provides a room and presenta-
tion equipment; the sponsor who buys
4 Nick Escobedo:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickescobedo/food and drinks; and, the speaker who
presents. As you can imagine, it’s tough
to get all those people together at the
same date and time, so we’ve done a few
things to cut down on the number of
variables:- We always hold the meetup on the
second Monday of each month at
6:30 pm. If a speaker isn’t available
one month, we’ll schedule them for
another one. - We have a backup plan. If a speaker
has to cancel last minute, we do a
few rounds of PHP Jeopardy^5 or an
open discussion. - We encourage sponsors to buy
the same food every time: pizza
and salad. It’s nothing fancy, but it
meets almost every dietary need,
it’s easy to get anywhere in the city,
and we know how much to typically
order. - We almost always use sponsors who
can also host. Having fewer parties
to coordinate with is a big help, plus
most offices have a large conference
room we can use after hours. - We split up the work. Nick—my
co-organizer—usually finds speak-
ers while I get sponsors and hosts
locked in. Having clear responsibil-
ities means each of us always knows
what we have to cover.
5 PHP Jeopardy:
https://github.com/jeremeamia/JeoPHPardy