Hi,
after our first community meeting, I was thinking about creating recurring Usergroup Events for local communities. I have some experience with this topic, as I’m organizing the Java Usergroup Mainz since 2017. Those meetups can draw in a lot of people, and can lead to a local community forming which helps each other and can be a source of information and input between users.
I think following aspects would be important:
- The capability to ensure regular meetings (every two months, once a quarter) in the same city
- Either hosting at companies offices in that city, or the means to rent a meeting room with food & drink (the meetings are in the evening, else people might go hungry and leave / don’t show up)
- Cities which might attract a user base interested in process management / etc
- Possibly several speakers from different parts of the community. Technical talks, business talks about the value of process orchestration, partners and neighboring technologies like RPA, Unit Testing, Frontend + UX in a process sense, reports from experience, etc.
- The realization that this can take a lot of time and money for the people orchestrating it
I can offer starting a group in Frankfurt, which has a larger history of BPMN- and Workflow topics due to its banks and insurances. After my longer project history there, I am also still somehow well connected and might be able to motivate people to join. Financially, I could start with our company renting rooms, while searching for other collaborators to share cost and build a tighter community.
What do you think? Is this a sensible approach? Is it too early? Would Frankfurt be a good spot to start? Are you able to organize and host such meetups in your proximity?