Projects' Little Helper

This is a version of an email I sent to the 5000+ members of the Melbourne Scrum and Agile meetup group, in February. I’ve been involved in organising this group, along with others like Craig Brown, since 2011.

This post is intended to be a record to point people in the group to, if they need explanation of the the experiment, in subsequent months. I also intend to do a follow up post, with some observations.

There are also some FAQs about the experiment on the February 2018 meetup listing.

The eagle eyed among you, will have noticed that to RSVP for the meetup on 28 February, there is a $10 fee.

DON’T PANIC. THE MEETUP IS STILL FREE!

Here’s the reasons why we are trying this experiment.

There were a few issues that I noticed in the meetups in 2017.

1 – We were struggling to get venues…sometime it only happened at the last moment.

2 – Often the topic of the meetup was decided on, at a late stage.

3 – Although many people RSVP’d, there was a very large % of no shows.

I’ll briefly address points 1 & 2:

Venue/Catering – I’ve sorted out the venue situation, as Envato have kindly provided the venue and provided a small budget for catering, for the next few months.

Meetup Topic – The idea of the meetup is that group member should propose topics, and if they don’t have the expertise to run the session themselves, we crowd finds someone who can. For Feb and March, Brett and Daniel have stepped in…but we still need topics for April onward.

RSVP EXPERIMENT –

As far as I know, this group is one of the longest running (founded in 2008) and largest (5100+ members) in Melbourne/Australia. There have been over 100 meetups in that time. It was started by Martin Kearns, who sometimes still gets involved.

It’s always on the last Wed of the month, unless public holidays or other extraordinary circumstances prevent it. In recent times, it’s an open RSVP, often without a confirmed topic or venue. As there are 5000+ members, but limited physical space, it seems that people will jump in and RSVP early, but then are a no show for various reasons…not interested in topic, double booked, washing their hair. Some people change their RSVP, often at the last moment, or they don’t give any notice.

The net effect is that:

• people who do really want to come miss out,

• it’s hard to cater and plan logistics,

• volunteers who run the Meetups don’t know how many people will come which makes it difficult in cases where equipment is needed for activities.

So, to secure your RSVP for Feb 28, you will need to use Meetups system and pay $10. When you show up, you get the money back, or you can choose to contribute to catering (useful if we don’t have a catering sponsor) and/or contribute to a good cause (for this experiment, it’s Flying Robot School.) Also RSVPs will open closer to the date of the Meetup, preferably once the topic has been decided.

There’s more FAQ’s about this on the Meetup’s page, where you can also RSVP. You can also see the 1 experiment canvas I’m using, at the top of this post.