Are you thinking of Hosting a Meetup?
Are you developing 'Cold feet’?
Are you thinking of holding an extravagant Meetup?
Then, this post is for you.
In this post, I am going to take you on a step-by-step journey on all the Preparation, challenges and hurdles, I had to overcome on my just concluded Meetup.
- Application Process (things to know before you apply, how to apply, Wait for Application approval)
- After Application Approval (Promotion of your event to ensure you have a better attendance)
- Preparation for the Meetup (all the assistance you may need)
- The Meetup Day (designate roles)
- After the Meetup (gratitude, recap, video upload)
- Other resources
- Special Gratitude
A. APPLICATION PROCESS
- BEFORE YOU APPLY
- You need to create a banner that is 16:9 inches.I created the banner for our Meetup; Inspirational Virtual Meetup-3 using this app; Flyer Maker. With a little tweak, here and there, you could create something beautiful and fun, that is uniquely You. That completely reflects you and your tastes.
- You need to write your application. Only 1500 Characters are permitted, I will advise you make your application post elsewhere, before pasting it into the box. There are four categories; a) Food Crawl, b) Photo Walk c) Geo Walk d) Map Editing and the last category e) Other Meetup; which covers every other thing that does not fall into the category of the first four. Ensure you choose something you really like to do and that whatever it is you are choosing has to do with Google Maps and the Local Guides Program to avoid application rejection.
- HOW TO APPLY FOR A MEETUP
- Visit the Home of Local Guides Connect
- Click on ‘Meetup’
- Scroll to the ‘Bottom’
- Click on ‘Host a Meetup’
- fill in your details
Please watch the video below;
How to Apply to ‘Host a Meetup’
- WAIT FOR APPLICATION APPROVAL
All of the emojis above describe how I felt after applying for my 'Visa’, Sorry, I mean; "To Host a Meetup". Every time, I saw a notification on my Gmail, I will lunge at it! Not quite! but I believe you know what I mean!
This means, after applying, you will have to WAIT for your Meetup Application to be approved.
This should not be difficult, right.
It takes 1-7 days for your application to be reviewed and approved. So, you have to wait.
B. AFTER APPLICATION APPROVAL
I am a FINICKY person! This is not good, but I can’t help it anymore!
I want to have a broad picture of what to expect and play out my whole event even before it happens I want to be able to point out and take out any glitches before the D-Day. That’s the way I have always been!
So, it sort of came into play here too.
So, what did I do?
- TOOK A POLL
- Collect 'People-opinion data’: I sought (past tense of seek
) people’s opinions. The Meetup I held was the 3rd in a series of 12.I had to know what people think from what they had experienced in the past. Please do the same! Your ‘idea’ and your ‘Meetup’ may be great to you and all that, but 'you are not the only one who will attend your Meetup, right? Please seek people’s opinions and listen to them. I spoke with Local Guides (old and new), Moderators (Connect and Google). Except, you really don’t care, or you choose to 'blatantly ignore’, you will get an idea of how your Meetup will play out and what to expect and see if you need to 'spice things up’.
- The 'data’ you derive from above, largely determines what to do next. In my case, I discovered that if I wanted more people to come to my Meetup, I needed to do a Promotion.
- PROMOTION
What exactly is Event Promotion?
In this case, they are the activities you carry out to ‘increase Public awareness’ of your Events. Now, I hear you saying; "It’s not that serious". Yeah, it’s not serious especially if you are not like me.
Have you visited the Home Page of Connect? or any of the ‘Topic Board’ pages?
Yeah! Now, you get the drill…
So, I did three;
-
the first was to “highlight my Speaker”, and the benefits of attending the Meetup. It got merged with my application post. Well slowly, people began to RSVP, but it almost felt like they ‘were being coerced’, they were not convinced. The Meetup had been published for so many days and the RSVP was very low. So, I believed people were not seeing it enough, so I did a second promotion;
-
the Second was to ‘wear my RSVP link’ all over Connect and search out all those who had ever liked my posts and give at least ‘one comment’ on their post so that they could ‘see me’ and get a ‘taste of my RSVP link’. I can’t begin to tell you how many days I spent doing this! So, let me share with you quickly how to do the two. a. Signature b. Likes Page a. Signature - 'Create a Post’, ‘type whatever it is you want to write including your RSVP link’ e.g;
"She was only 21 when she attended Connect Live
She will be speaking on the 21st of June, 2020
Kindly R.S.V.P
Highlighting this text; (a.k.a. Select all or ‘CTRL A’) and clicking on HTML, (this ‘tab’ comes write after the ‘bullet and numbers’ icons command), converts what you have written into what your Computer can read; the HTML code. So, you copy this code and go to paste in your Signature box, find it here. This can only be done on a Desktop or Laptop computer system, I haven’t seen the HTML tab on my mobile Phone. b. Likes (from Users), click on your Profile Page, scroll to the bottom, there you will find all those who have ever liked your posts or comments.
-
I had just four days to go and I just sensed that; “each continent of the earth had not been represented”. So, I had to get help in creating a little drama which gave birth to this post; What is so Special about ‘Connect Live’? It almost seemed like Magic
We call this "The Plug". People could not stop talking about the ‘Dances’, what to expect and all. finally, people’s opinion had been swayed and we went from a “51 people RSVP” (from 6th of June, 2020 - 17th of June, 2020) to a “78 people RSVP” (June 17, 2020 - June 21, 2020)
The simple lesson from this is; If you want more Local Guides to attend your event, ‘tagging all your friends and family’, using fanciful signatures, will work but a 'focused People-targeted-Promotion’ will create a bomb-like effect with an aftermath everyone will live to remember.
- TOOLS used for Promotion
- Snapchat video
- GIF images (I created this on my Phone, if I select 3 or more images, I have the option to ‘create GIF’, you can also use Google Photos too)
- Animated texts. I used this OQ, it also gives the option to add a ‘Voice over’ right before saving your texts.
- Viva Video Pro to merge everything together
- Youtube
After, I completed my last promotion, I saw that I was getting the desired effect, I moved to the planning of the D-day.
C. PREPARATION FOR THE MEETUP
We have so many talented Local Guides! No matter, who you think you are, there is one Local Guide out there to help you.
- Music - DJ Alpha Connect ID Alffiiy
- Games - Connect IDs - Jaisoncbe, An Indian friend who refused to be named and Isaac Oguji
- Admitting people in
- Managing of chat box
- Create a ‘Shared Album’ in Google Photos that Participants can share screenshots taken during the Meetup too
It was a team work, you can create your team too, to make your Meetup more fun -filled and interesting. You can’t be the only one talking, presenting, admitting people in, looking in the chat box, entertaining your guests, designate tasks and roles. Well, You can
D. THE DAY OF THE MEETUP
- Good internet
- Back up ( I have attended Meetup where the Host got ‘kicked out’ for whatever reason), let there be someone or people who will fill in for you
- Good surrounding and ambiance
- Moderate (some Attendees will talk so much, that they will almost take over your event, know when to say; **it’s okay,**Your team handles the rest)
- ‘Stay in the Center of your frame’ -This I learnt from @Shrut19 because people need to see you and for ‘photo ops’
- Share the Album link ‘again and again’ for people to add their photos.
E. AFTER THE MEETUP
- Gratitude messages; your team, people who came and so on
- RECAPITULATION (a.k.a. Recap) It is one of the things the Google team will ask for from you after your Meetup. If you recorded, writing the Recap will be a ‘piece of cake’, you just need to go through the video. Remember the ‘Recap’ is a summary of what went on at the Meetup. This should be easy, right?
- VIDEO (did you make a video? did you record your Meetup?
pheeewww! You are in for some real work! If I post a picture of what I looked like after working on my video, you will feel sorry for me.
- VIDEO PROCESSING
According to what I have been told, you have to be on G-Suite to be able to 'Record during a Meetup using Google Meet’. It is a ‘paid version’.
So, I am not getting into that. Did you record? Yes
For me, It was over 3 hours worth of recording.
So, I had to sit to clean up words, all of the adlibs and all. After cleaning it up, I had to export, and then prepare for upload to Youtube, All of these took about 24 hours of my time! before I got help!
- I edited the video using Viva Video Pro (Edit, Trim, Split, Cut-out, move, replace, add) This decreased the video lenght by over 1 hour.
- On exporting from Viva Video, I had a 9GB size video
. After about 9 hours, only 422MB had been uploaded toYoutube
- I sought help again and it was only then, I was told I have to reduce the size of my video, as such large videos may not even be watched by anyone, that was when and where I met Panda Video Compressor; I used this compressor and my 9GB video was compressed to about 422MB which I uploaded to Youtube. You choose the size you want actually.
F. OTHER RESOURCES
In three other posts, I am going to cover;
- How to create a Kahoot game challenge
- How to use Google Meet; as an attendee and as a Host
- How to create a Google Photos shared (collaborative) album for your Meetup
G. SPECIAL GRATITUDE
- **TravellerG -
Thank you Papa @TravellerG **
- **JaisonCbe - What to do without your assistance? I don’t know. Thanks for taking me by the hands and leading me through. @jaisoncbe **
- **Jose_G_Benjamin -
Thank you! @Jose_G_Benjamin **
- TraciC - Thank you for the Kahoot and ‘timing’ idea
- My Special Indian Friend -You refuse to be mentioned, but you know yourself! I owe you a lot
- Falguni and Shreeya -Thank you for keeping my company when I had to work late into the night
@FalguniP and @Shreeya_99
- **Isaac Oguji - thank you for the Kahoot questions and setting me up on how to go about it @Mayford **
- Thank you @Shrut19 for always taking the best Photo shots!
- Our Core team (Team India) thank you for your immense help and support -Anil6969, PramodMG, Karan_iclickthese, Bhavana Kuntal, Govind_Jha, Saithiyaraj, Bijohn Adams, Sophie_menuse, Guru Priya Krishna, and Ajit Thite.
- All Local Guides and attendees - Without you there is no Meetup, thank you.