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Just one caution - when I was helping to set up a local user group, a lot or companies wanted a guarantee that no poaching would occur, and tried to make that a
by jstclair 13y ago
Just one caution - when I was helping to set up a local user group, a lot or companies wanted a guarantee that no poaching would occur, and tried to make that a condition of their participation.
Of course, we couldn't do that, but at the same time, we wouldn't make it a prominent part of the user group's mission either.
So, great initiative, but if you're gonna bring this into your community, just consider the effects (if any) on corporate sponsorship.
- josh_fyi 13y agoHow did that work? Usually user groups are independent initiatives by developers, with at most a room or minor funds provided by a sponsoring company or two. Companies can't keep their employees from going to the Ruby/Java/C++ User Group in their spare time. So what was the situation there?
- jstclair 13y agoWe were pretty successfully rather quickly, and the attendees quickly grew past most local company's ability to host our meetings. Costs in Norway for rooms/food & drink is higher than normal; plus, we tried to bring in a lot of external speakers. So, all in all, we were pretty dependent upon a decent amount of funding. I wasn't suggesting that companies we were working with would stop people coming; but at least when we were starting, getting people to actually attend was a struggle. Building the community can require a bigger outlay that people assume - it's not just "meet up and they will come". So, I'm just saying that some communities might want to think twice about this.