LJN meet-ups, some thoughts and ideas on organising one

It is great to see that people are taking to the idea of face-to-face meetings and sharing some time together over a pint and a bite to eat.

The meet-ups remind me of a similar one I was involved in in Manchester that was aimed at bloggers, website designers and other creative endeavours.

That was two years ago now and the Social Media Cafe, as it is called, has gone from strength to strength, here is a write-up of the most recent meeting hosted by the BBC in Manchester.

So I thought I'd pass on a few tips from what I learnt when I helped promote and generate interest in it.

1. It was an open meeting so anyone could come along and bring friends, just like the network itself.

2. We based the meetings around an 'un-conference' setting, which meant people volunteered to talk about a project, idea or development they'd worked upon.

This was very open-ended, no one took notes or minutes, if you had something to share then all that was asked of you was to prepare an interesting presentation and be ready to take a few questions.

3. Using the Events facility on the network might help organise attendees and keep all the information in one place.

I'd suggest that one person starts an event listing once an initial level of interest is registered, then you can quickly see who is attending, as well as quickly see location, maps as well as dates and times.

4. Depending upon how things go maybe look to have a regular date and location for meet-ups, the Social Media Cafe gets together on the first Tuesday of every month.

This would give you something to take to local newspapers and websites to say that the meetings are taking place and that they are on these dates.

5. One spin-off of the Manchester meetings has been open events for businesses to come along and learn more about social media tools and techniques, a great way to spread knowledge and gain clients.

I don't think it would be too much of a leap to provide similar open events to local residents that may well generate longer term contracts and new clients.

Hope these ideas help, but as ever feel free to leave a comment or question.