I ran my version of the IH meetup and this is my advice if you want to launch yours

Back in the day I attended MANY IH meetups in Austin, but then the pandemic happened. Everything shut down. I wanted to start it up again, so I did. Here's some thoughts if you're wanting to host your own chapter.

This month, I ran my version of the IH meetup and this is my advice if you want to launch your chapter:

1. Pick a spot that is quiet but busy enough

I picked QuickiePickie - a local coffee shop in Austin. Here's why:

• Free parking: Nice
• Free tables: like most coffee shops
• Outdoors area with tables: because Covid
• Supporting a local business: I bought coffee and cake, other attendees bought snacks themselves - so we supported the local business, check...
• Not awkward: It's not like I booked a room or organized it in a private event space which probably would require a ton more preparation and then if no one shows up - sad times for you!

2. Come prepared

Prepared the sign-up page - actually just on Notion because if you don't have Notion or you don't want to sign-up to Notion to add yourself to the attendee list then you're probably not interested in an IH meetup altogether
(Yes I made it a little bit harder for people to sign-up in exchange for knowing the fact that people would've showed up)

Then I posted it on IH: https://www.indiehackers.com/meetups

On the day:
I already had a couple of things to talk about when I got to the spot:

• Nice to meet you
• How do you like Indiehackers.com
• What are you working on
• Do you work full time on your project or part time
  ...

With just these couple of questions you break the ice with anyone attending and you get to know them better!

I also made sure everyone was comfortable, if you see/hear something wrong don't just ignore it - speak up. Luckily nothing happened this time!

3. Follow-up

Our meetup lasted about 1.30h - we all talked about the above and beyond - issues with monetization, SEO, finding customers, and more techy stuff.

I felt energized and happy to have people attend the meetup after so many years of nothingness and living at home.

At the end of the meetup I asked the folks who attended if they wanted to be put on an SMS list - not the marketing type - but more like a group chat. This way we can schedule more meetups and follow up on the discussions we had

I hope if you're in Austin, TX that you can attend our next meetup in February, it will be posted here on IH and will pop up on the homepage alongside all the other events - would be nice if these meetups would be prioritized over all other events happening on the sidebar cc @csallen ;)

Hope you can join us for our next one:
https://lime-random-faf.notion.site/February-2022-Indiehackers-Austin-Texas-db629242e91c4a6b9784a7c23f25a072