Before the Event

Making initial plans

With organizing any event, it’s usually good to have an overview of what you want to accomplish before setting out to do the first steps. That means that you should be clear where, (roughly) when and with who you want to organize your event. It’s usually better if you have an organizing/teaching team of at least two, or more depending on the size of your audience. Also if you have a rough date and a potential venue, it might be good to give them a call before doing anything concrete.

Getting things scheduled

First things first, settle on a date. This can be during the work week, but keep in mind that it’s usually an all-day event, so people’s capabilities might be limited. Make sure that nothing else is happening at your chosen date (like a world cup finale in your city, for example).

After that, probably the most important step is to secure a venue for your date. Try asking around, be it on Twitter, at meetups, or in other local circles. If you live in a bigger city, there’s usually some companies who would be happy to sponsor the venue for your event.

Phew, that’s the two most important things done! Now’s probably the point at which you should post your meetup in our GitHub issue tracker. If you want to, or if you’re unsure about anything, you can contact us privately before. Once you’re ready, post a new issue in the rustbridge/organizing GitHub repository. It doesn’t have to be an incredibly detailed issue, it just needs the time and the name of an organizer (maybe you?). For this purpose, we provide a handy GitHub issue template that includes a bunch of checklists you can fill out as the event draws closer. A venue is also recommended, but if you don’t have one at this stage, we have ways to help you with that.

Getting people to sign up

Because RustBridge events are aimed towards underrepresented minorities, you might want to consider not making it a “everyone can come without registration” type of event. Not only does it make some people feel unwell, but we’ve had cases in the past where events got interrupted by third parties with bad intent. For that same reason, consider not making the venue location public, especially if it’s a publicly accessible venue.

We usually use Bridge Troll to host our events. Bridge Troll also handles signups, checkins, volunteers and a bunch of other super helpful stuff. If you have a registered chapter on Bridge Troll, you can start planning events, if not, please talk to us about getting it on there!

If you want to spread the word about your event, we can definitely help you with that. We have multiple channels over which we can announce your event, so feel free to talk to us regarding that.

As the event approaches

Getting nervous yet? That’s fine, everyone does! Here’s a couple of things that you might want to consider as your event draws closer:

• Catering. People probably want lunch, so if the venue offers catering, great! If not, no worries, you can always just tell the group to go and organize lunch on their own.
• Drinks. Some venues have a fridge with drinks, if not, you might just want to get some water and cups from the local supermarket.