PHP× World

Running Events

Your First Event

Think of your first event as an opportunity to gather a few core community members who will hopefully serve as the keystone of your group moving forward. Many first meetups will only have 3–6 people at them, but often those few people will show up often and maybe even help organize future events.

While having a speaker at your first event will likely draw a larger crowd, several PHP× meetups have started very informally. There's no right way to do it, as long as you're getting together!

Sponsors

We're working to compile a list of companies that are open to sponsoring local PHP events. If you run a company that would like to be added, please reach out!

  • Laravel will sponsor PHP× meetups with some swag and food/beverage money (you have to apply and meet certain criteria).
  • JetBrains will provide free product licenses to events with over 50 attendees
  • MailCoach is offering all PHP× groups a free account to use for sending out event announcements (see the organizers page for more details)
  • Warp will reimburse groups up to $300 for in-person developer meetups, but requires that you show an 8-10 minute Warp video as part of the event.

Location

Finding a venue for your event can be one of the hardest parts when you start out. A few places to try:

  • Contact local companies that use PHP. They may be more than happy to host and let you use a conference room or some other meeting space.
  • Try local coworking spaces. They may be happy to let you use their space during the evening in hopes that it will bring in new members.
  • Check with your local library—some will have meeting spaces that you can rent as part of your regular library membership.
  • Especially for social events, consider meeting at a local restaurant, or a park.

Food & Drinks

In general, most groups tend to offer some food and drinks at events. Usually, this is pizza or sandwiches, seltzers, and maybe beer (although you want to be thoughtful about your audience if you choose to serve alcohol).

Don't expect everyone who arrives to eat and drink. It really depends on the group, but for many groups only 60–70% of attendees will eat or drink anything. After your first meetup or two you will start to get the hang of planning. Until then, if you have some funding, err on the side of having too much. If you don't have any sponsors, it's perfectly fine to keep things to a minimum, or hold the event at a venue like a restaurant, where each attendee can handle their own food.

Meetup Formats

In general, we have found three common meetup formats work great:

  1. Technical talks
  2. Show-and-tell events
  3. Social meetups

Often it's best to mix-and-match, which can take the pressure off of organizers (it can be hard to find a new speaker every month, or even every other month). For example, a group that meets six times a year might have two events with speakers, two social events, and two show-and-tells.

Technical talks

Events with a technical talks tend to have the largest turn-out. These attract people who are interested in the social time before and after, as well as folks who are more focussed on professional development. Expect a larger group before and during the talk, with potentially some people leaving after the talk, but before the event is entirely over.

For an evening meetup, sticking to one or two 15–30 minute talks is best. Some groups choose to record the talks, and others don't. If you do plan to record the talk, be sure to let the speakers know ahead of time, and give them an opportunity to decide what you do with the recording afterward.

Finding Speakers

Here are a couple resources for finding speakers:

  • CFP Watch is a place to post calls for papers
  • Laravel has offered to facilitate occasional speakers from the Laravel team

Show-and-tell events

Doing a show-and-tell is a great low-stakes to get people to present at your meetups. These are typically 5–10 minute informal demos of something that a community member is working on. On a show-and-tell night, you may have up to 5–8 people do a quick demo.

Show-and-tell is often a great way to let folks show things that are a little outside their regular day-to-day PHP work. This might include showing some Swift code for an iOS app, or Kotlin code for a PhpStorm plugin, or progress on a new mechanical keyboard or Arduino project.

Social meetups

It's also perfectly fine to hold purely social meetups. This can be a get-together at a local pizza shop, a group hike, or a meetup at your usual event space but with no fixed agenda. Some groups have even talked about doing an escape room, or something like bowling or mini golf. (If you end up doing something that really works, definitely let us know so we can add it to this page!)