Follow-ups and Meetups

After conducting a successful workshop, you may want to keep the energy going and create a group of learners that would meet regularly.

Services like Meetup provide what you need to get started. This service costs money but it will help you create events where people can register, contact members easily, promote your sponsors, and more.

Basic rules for organizing a Django Girls meetup:

• You can create a meetup only after having successfully organized a workshop.
• Contact us if you want to use the name Django Girls for your meetup.
• You need a Code of Conduct and you need to put a link to it on your meetup’s page. We recommend you to use our Code of Conduct.
• Keep your event beginner friendly.

To help you get started, here are some examples of Django Girls meetups and follow-up: Django Girls Seoul Code Camp and Django Girls Amsterdam meetup.

Sponsors

You don’t need a big budget for your meetup: you only need to be able to cover your meetup’s fees.

Don’t hesitate to reuse leftover stickers, badges or decoration from your previous event. If you want to print more stickers, you can find Django Girls stickers’ templates in our resources repository.

If you plan to do a bigger follow-up, like an all day event, you may need to raise money again. In that case, check the sponsor chapter and don’t forget to mention your successful workshop ;)

Finding a venue

Like for Django Girls workshops, this could be one of the hardest parts.

Start by asking companies you’re close to: it could be the company you work for, your friends’ companies, a previous sponsor, etc.

If it’s not working, contact other tech companies in your town. Job boards, tech conferences websites, and other tech meetups are also a good way to start.

Try to find a place that’s relatively central or well connected to public transportation and accessible to people with disabilities: if you’re not sure what it means, check our accessibility chapter.

Logistics

Depending on what you’re planning to do, here’s a list of what you may need:

• Electricity and enough power outlets for everyone.
• A good Internet connection: make the network name and password available. If possible, write it somewhere visible so you don’t have to repeat it all the time.
• A projector: check if your venue have adapters available or don’t forget to bring yours ;)
• Food and/or beverages: if it’s included with your venue, check if there are non-alcoholic and vegetarian options.

Can’t find a venue?

If you can’t find a company to host your meetup, try something different: meet in a cafe, a hackerspace, a library with a group room or meet in a park and do a picnic. Networking is also an important part of meetups and it’s better to meet every month than to skip one ;)

Activities

Depending on your Meetup or follow-up duration you can:

- Do talks,
- Contribute to open source projects or Django Girls,
- Create learning groups,
- Do multiple lightning talks,
- Do a "Call For Proposal" workshop,
- etc.

Why so many people didn’t come?!

A lot of people RSVPed but didn’t show? Don’t worry, that’s one of the downsides of free meetups. Do a headcount at each event to know how many people usually attend your meetup.

If something went wrong, listen to feedback and make changes. Try to have a different topic and speakers for each meetup: if you don’t do that, people will get bored and won’t come anymore.