How do you keep user groups engaging and fun?

[Elijah_K]

This is an open call for ideas and suggestions designed to ensure user group meetings are fun and engaging networking opportunities for attendees!

• What is your typical agenda? How many technical sessions do you typically have? What time of day do you normally meet?
• What is the best presentation and/or presenter you've ever seen? Why?
• What are you doing to encourage people to get back together in person? (let NI know if we can help sponsor food!)

Related, as many of you know, GDevCon has been exploring the concept of "Huddles." Does anyone here see opportunity to adapt this concept to user groups?

[joerg.hampel]

For WUELUG:

• I try to come up with a theme for each meeting so we can have a coherent set of presentations. The last one we had was "Security Summit," so we had presentations revolving around that topic. 
• We usually meet in person and have presenters in the room. Sometimes, we will also invite people to present remotely if they happen to have good content for our theme, but that is rather the exception (our members prefer German in-person presenters to exotic matter experts)
• Our members usually take turns hosting the meetings, so the first meeting session is often a presentation about the host company and/or a tour of their facility.
• I try to have somebody from NI join us, both to facilitate networking between NI and our members and to get the latest news or content pertinent to our theme. Also, this shows our participants that NI still cares.
• Our meetings go from 5 - 9 pm and we usually have 4 sessions. Mostly those are presentations, but we've had code reviews and open discussions, too.
• We meet 3 to 4 times a year.
• I've seen many great presenters. If I have to pick one, I'll go with Darren Nattinger. He's the nicest guy, extremely savvy, engaging and fun to listen to, and he puts a lot of thought and effort into his presentations. 
• We have drinks and food at our meetings. Usually, we just order pizza. 
• People don't need a lot of encouragement. They're usually looking forward to our meeting, as long as I take care of the organisation and make it easy for them.

We're lucky in that we have a fantastic group of people here. I even got requests to organise a full-day event in addition to the regular evening meetings, on a weekend. Our members are investing their personal/private time, many travel 1.5 hours in each direction, and still, I have to kick them out at 9 pm 😉

NI has been showing great support recently. For our last meeting, NI covered the cost of room, food and drinks, they provided content (slides on NI's current doings in regard to cyber security) and they sent two people (an engineer who presented Steve Summers' security slides, and the new Country Manager for Germany). Especially Matteo, the country manager, was super happy about the opportunity to network with people and promised to keep his support going.

We also have a public checklist for planning and conducting a user group meeting in our Dokuwiki.

[Freel]

The Dutch LabVIEW User Group (DutLUG) has been thriving for seven years, regularly drawing between 30 and 40 attendees to each meeting. We're currently at our venue’s capacity of 40, but we're open to expanding by securing a larger room.

Here's a more structured overview of how we run our meetings:

• Frequency and Scheduling: We hold 4 meetings annually, details of which are published at the beginning of each year on the NI Forums.
• Venue: Our meetings take place at the High-Tech Campus in Eindhoven, a hub for technical professionals. The venue includes a dining area and conference rooms equipped with projectors.
• Timing: Meetings are on Thursdays, starting at 17:00 (5 PM) CET and officially wrapping up by 20:00 (8 PM) CET, although we have the room until 21:00 (9 PM) CET. Many attendees choose to stay longer, using the extra time to engage in further discussion and networking.
• Networking and Food: From 17:00 to 18:00 (5 PM to 6 PM CET), we offer free hamburgers, fries, and drinks. This time is ideal for networking and socializing as attendees often come straight from work.
• Registration and Attendance: We use Eventbrite for registration. To accommodate fluctuations in attendance, we order food for three more than the number registered.
• Presentations: After dinner, at 18:00 (6 PM CET), we transition to the presentation room. Each meeting features two LabVIEW related presentations (occasionally TestStand), each lasting about 40 minutes plus time for questions. The presentations are in English to accommodate the diverse linguistic background of our attendees.
• Communication: We manage our communications through a MailChimp mailing list. Attendees receive all necessary information, including registration details, schedule, and presentation abstracts, 4 weeks in advance, with a reminder 1 week prior.
• Community Engagement: Presentation details, including the presenter’s name, title, and a short abstract, are posted on the community forum in advance. We emphasize the value of in-person interactions, which is why we opt not to live stream our events.

Our sponsors, VI Technologies and CNrood (an NI Authorized Distributor), play a significant role in our gatherings, and we hope to include NI in the future.

For more information, visit our website at www.dutlug.nl.

Should you have any questions or need further details, please do not hesitate to reach out.