6 ms·

Stopped reading at "Group sponsorship by developer focused companies", this sounds so bad when just before they said "no recruiters, no sales people, no gimmick

Stopped reading at "Group sponsorship by developer focused companies", this sounds so bad when just before they said "no recruiters, no sales people, no gimmicks." => pick one of these two, can't have both at the same time!

CPLX 8y ago
I’m pretty sure the model is something like listen to a five minute intro from a sponsor in exchange for a bunch to free food. That’s pretty much the basic concept behind every professional networking conference, doesn’t seem very controversial.
- miles_matthias 8y ago
  I try to avoid the 5 minute intros, which is actually well received by the first sponsor I have, because it's less genuine.
- gregoriol 8y ago
  Why would you want free food? Can't CTOs pay for their "lunch" at a restaurant? I often have lunch or drinks with other people in our domain, and I don't see why we would ever want a sponsor, we just go out together to eat and/or drink, talk about stuff, you know, just like that.
mooreds 8y ago
I have been a member of the Boulder group for over a year and the sponsorship is relatively new. Before then there was no website, just an email list, and lunch was just pay as you go (which, with 15 people, was a bit of a pain when we got the check). As far as I can tell, the influence of the sponsor is limited to a thank you at lunch and a shout out on the website. But I understand your concern about the tension. This is something that every volunteer organization or meetup group struggles with: 1. It usually costs money to put on an event worth going to. Not a ton, but food, beverages and space aren't free. 2. People prefer free (and tech people tend to expect free). I know another meetup that struggled for years trying to solve this problem, and never found a satisfactory answer. The answers I have seen work for groups are: 1. Find sponsors and thank them 2. Charge a membership fee 3. Only do free stuff (meet in the library, or a park) 4. Have the meetup organizer pay out of pocket (a different kind of sponsorship) 5. Be lucky enough to have already acquired some kind of income generation (typically an older established gepup like a fraternal order) It's a tough problem.
- czbond 8y ago
  How is the Boulder group? I've been meaning to come that way - I'd pay at this point to have strategic rather than consistently tactical technology discussions. Every other meetup group devolves into frameworks, "cool tech", language talks, devops, etc.
  - mooreds 8y ago
    Someone else mentioned"war stories" and I have definitely heard some. But I have found it to be stimulating and interesting conversation, with some different perspectives (for instance on hiring). However, the best bang for the buck, in terms of strategic insight, is probably the email list.
    - miles_matthias 8y ago
      I'd agree about the email list. The lunch format is great for non-awkward socializing, but people are busy and travel a lot, and the email list gives a way for people to write out long form advice and experiences to give to the group. That's a big part of what I'm trying to help scale for the group.
  - kathkeating 8y ago
    There was a good discussion on impostor syndrome at one of the lunches. And once we had a great roundtable lunch discussion on Security (I learned so much that day).
- CamTin 8y ago
  These are all ostensibly people with high-upper-quintile incomes at minimum. Is it really out of line to just have everybody pay their own lunch check?
  - miles_matthias 8y ago
    It's definitely not too much to ask for people to pay their own bill at lunch, but my goal is to continue to add value to the group, which I think will become easier if there are more resources at the group's disposal. More cities, more engineering leaders to get advice from or make connections to, etc.
miles_matthias 8y ago
This is definitely something I thought a lot about before accepting sponsorship. Right now we only have 1 sponsor, and they picked us because they want to be authentic, without pitches and marketing to the group. So I'm trying to be ultra selective of which sponsors I work with to maintain the genuine connections this group has.
- rectang 8y ago
  How do you expect to continue to maintain that distance from sponsors under the pressure to grow? Could CTO Lunches remain small? Are you organized as a 501(c)(3), a charity where donations are tax-deductible and therefore must not be used for commercial purposes? (That would be effective but is almost certainly too much overhead.) (Cool project, btw.)
  - miles_matthias 8y ago
    Thanks! Since you asked, and I started this project simply to benefit the community, I'll dump my thoughts on scaling here (would appreciate any feedback!) 1. Each city has a captain, who is responsible for setting the time & place of each monthly lunch (and possibly for facilitating monthly local email threads / activity updates). A good captain is key to keeping that small, local community feeling going. <<< This is the main answer to your question. EDIT: I think it's super important to reiterate that each local captain is an engineering leader themselves. It's not some marketing person from a dev-oriented company. 2. Sponsors -- we only have 1 sponsor right now (name.com), and it's about a month old. I met them while organizing Boulder Startup Week because they were volunteering to help organize BSW too. They're headquatered in Denver, so 1 person from the company comes to the Boulder & Denver lunches (they don't give pitches, they just eat lunch and mingle). I still need to talk with name.com if they're interested in continuing to sponsor the group world wide, which would be cool because they're great at video content and they hate timeshare pitches as much as we do. But if they'd like to keep it local, then I think all sponsors should be local. I know in each startup community there are small to mid size companies doing cool, valuable work and not being jerks about it. Those are the types of sponsors that would be valuable to the group, so that's what I'd help focus on. 3. Even more value -- I really haven't thought this through, but I'd love it if I could spend all of my time providing more value to the group. Outside of the time I've spent being a CTO & co-founder of a VC backed company, I love writing books, doing interviews (Kevin & I did StartupCTO.io, a podcast for a while), putting on events, and building little SaaS tools to help people. I'm not sure how to support myself financially to do that (maybe there's a paid premium membership that's optional for people? But the email list & in person event would always be free! Maybe sponsors help me with that?), but that would be amazing. Oh and structure of the email list: * Everyone * Colorado * Texas * ... where members can always email just their local group, but they have the option of participating in or starting discussions with the international community.

CPLX 8y ago

I’m pretty sure the model is something like listen to a five minute intro from a sponsor in exchange for a bunch to free food. That’s pretty much the basic concept behind every professional networking conference, doesn’t seem very controversial.

miles_matthias 8y ago
I try to avoid the 5 minute intros, which is actually well received by the first sponsor I have, because it's less genuine.
gregoriol 8y ago
Why would you want free food? Can't CTOs pay for their "lunch" at a restaurant? I often have lunch or drinks with other people in our domain, and I don't see why we would ever want a sponsor, we just go out together to eat and/or drink, talk about stuff, you know, just like that.

mooreds 8y ago

I have been a member of the Boulder group for over a year and the sponsorship is relatively new. Before then there was no website, just an email list, and lunch was just pay as you go (which, with 15 people, was a bit of a pain when we got the check). As far as I can tell, the influence of the sponsor is limited to a thank you at lunch and a shout out on the website. But I understand your concern about the tension. This is something that every volunteer organization or meetup group struggles with: 1. It usually costs money to put on an event worth going to. Not a ton, but food, beverages and space aren't free. 2. People prefer free (and tech people tend to expect free). I know another meetup that struggled for years trying to solve this problem, and never found a satisfactory answer. The answers I have seen work for groups are: 1. Find sponsors and thank them 2. Charge a membership fee 3. Only do free stuff (meet in the library, or a park) 4. Have the meetup organizer pay out of pocket (a different kind of sponsorship) 5. Be lucky enough to have already acquired some kind of income generation (typically an older established gepup like a fraternal order) It's a tough problem.

czbond 8y ago
How is the Boulder group? I've been meaning to come that way - I'd pay at this point to have strategic rather than consistently tactical technology discussions. Every other meetup group devolves into frameworks, "cool tech", language talks, devops, etc.
- mooreds 8y ago
  Someone else mentioned"war stories" and I have definitely heard some. But I have found it to be stimulating and interesting conversation, with some different perspectives (for instance on hiring). However, the best bang for the buck, in terms of strategic insight, is probably the email list.
  - miles_matthias 8y ago
    I'd agree about the email list. The lunch format is great for non-awkward socializing, but people are busy and travel a lot, and the email list gives a way for people to write out long form advice and experiences to give to the group. That's a big part of what I'm trying to help scale for the group.
- kathkeating 8y ago
  There was a good discussion on impostor syndrome at one of the lunches. And once we had a great roundtable lunch discussion on Security (I learned so much that day).
CamTin 8y ago
These are all ostensibly people with high-upper-quintile incomes at minimum. Is it really out of line to just have everybody pay their own lunch check?
- miles_matthias 8y ago
  It's definitely not too much to ask for people to pay their own bill at lunch, but my goal is to continue to add value to the group, which I think will become easier if there are more resources at the group's disposal. More cities, more engineering leaders to get advice from or make connections to, etc.

miles_matthias 8y ago

This is definitely something I thought a lot about before accepting sponsorship. Right now we only have 1 sponsor, and they picked us because they want to be authentic, without pitches and marketing to the group. So I'm trying to be ultra selective of which sponsors I work with to maintain the genuine connections this group has.

rectang 8y ago
How do you expect to continue to maintain that distance from sponsors under the pressure to grow? Could CTO Lunches remain small? Are you organized as a 501(c)(3), a charity where donations are tax-deductible and therefore must not be used for commercial purposes? (That would be effective but is almost certainly too much overhead.) (Cool project, btw.)
- miles_matthias 8y ago
  Thanks! Since you asked, and I started this project simply to benefit the community, I'll dump my thoughts on scaling here (would appreciate any feedback!) 1. Each city has a captain, who is responsible for setting the time & place of each monthly lunch (and possibly for facilitating monthly local email threads / activity updates). A good captain is key to keeping that small, local community feeling going. <<< This is the main answer to your question. EDIT: I think it's super important to reiterate that each local captain is an engineering leader themselves. It's not some marketing person from a dev-oriented company. 2. Sponsors -- we only have 1 sponsor right now (name.com), and it's about a month old. I met them while organizing Boulder Startup Week because they were volunteering to help organize BSW too. They're headquatered in Denver, so 1 person from the company comes to the Boulder & Denver lunches (they don't give pitches, they just eat lunch and mingle). I still need to talk with name.com if they're interested in continuing to sponsor the group world wide, which would be cool because they're great at video content and they hate timeshare pitches as much as we do. But if they'd like to keep it local, then I think all sponsors should be local. I know in each startup community there are small to mid size companies doing cool, valuable work and not being jerks about it. Those are the types of sponsors that would be valuable to the group, so that's what I'd help focus on. 3. Even more value -- I really haven't thought this through, but I'd love it if I could spend all of my time providing more value to the group. Outside of the time I've spent being a CTO & co-founder of a VC backed company, I love writing books, doing interviews (Kevin & I did StartupCTO.io, a podcast for a while), putting on events, and building little SaaS tools to help people. I'm not sure how to support myself financially to do that (maybe there's a paid premium membership that's optional for people? But the email list & in person event would always be free! Maybe sponsors help me with that?), but that would be amazing. Oh and structure of the email list: * Everyone * Colorado * Texas * ... where members can always email just their local group, but they have the option of participating in or starting discussions with the international community.