Developer events can be a fun opportunity to meet other gurus in your area who share a similar passion for application development. These events generally fall into one of three categories or a combination thereof:

1. Meetups where local developers collect, network, and show off their wares
2. Lectures or discussions where an established member of the developer community shares his/her experiences in a presentation format and answers audience questions
3. Hackathons where developers, either in teams or individually, design and build new applications during the event and share them with the other attendees afterward

Organizing an event can take some time, especially if you're new to the planning scene. To help with the process, a planning guide is available, divided into three main sections:

• #Organize lists the steps you should follow during the planning phase and offers guidance on the days and times that work best as well as all of the considerations you should ready from projectors and laptops to mailing lists and nourishment.
• #Promote provides a listing of promotional opportunities to help spread the word to prospective attendees.
• #Execute offers a set of sample agendas that can be used depending on the type of event.

Organize

Step 1: Set a date

Make sure to give yourself at least three to four weeks for planning and promotion, perhaps even longer depending on the size and complexity of the event. In terms of time and day, scheduling the event towards the end of the week or on the weekend seems to work the best, particularly for hackathons. Evening and weekend events allows the greatest number of community members to participate and helps to minimize distractions for your fellow employees, although this may differ in other cultures or countries.

Step 2: Reserve the event space

Be sure to reserve a meeting area with a sufficient capacity (depending on the size and scope of your event, this area should comfortably accommodate between 25 and 100 individuals) for the duration of the event plus one or two hours for setup and cleanup. If the meeting area is in a private building, make sure that you can acquire building security to let people in and escort them into privileged area (e.g. if the restroom isn't within the same security zone as the room itself). The location should be reasonably accessible and easy to locate. Preference should be given to areas in range of a strong, free wireless connection point so you won't have to set this up yourself.

Step 3: Reserve/acquire equipment and other supplies

For hackathons, the following is required:

• Projector and projection screen
• Laptop computer for presenting
  • Make sure to have any necessary adapters (e.g. DVI to VGA) handy.
• Tables and chairs
  • Since the attendees are going to be "hacking" all day, make sure they have a suitable working space. There should be at least one chair per attendee and the chairs should be reasonably spaced out so attendees don't feel cramped. Round tables are good because they encourage interaction between developers, but rows of long tables may be better if you plan on using the projector extensively throughout the event since each attendee will already be facing the front of the room.
• Power strips
  • Each table should have a power strip with at least one outlet per chair.
• Strong Internet connection
  • If the meeting area reserved is not in range of a strong, free wireless signal or doesn't have physical network ports that attendees can freely connect to, you must provide an access point yourself and negotiate your wireless options with the area coordinator. Internet access is a necessity as attendees must be able to browse online documentation and test their projects in various containers.
• Whiteboards and dry erase markers
  • The more the better, preferably one per table, but you may be able to get by with less.

The following items are encouraged but optional:

• Name tags/stickers
  • Name tags naturally help attendees meet each other and break the ice, especially when the attendees write their affiliations on the tag as well.
• Camera
  • In case you want to record the event and/or final presentations, a still or video camera is handy.
• Swag
  • It's always a nice touch to provide attendees with a small piece of swag; if a company is sponsoring your meet-up or providing you space, see if they have any small material you can give attendees (e.g. shirts/caps, stress balls, etc.).

Step 4: Create one or more event listings

To save yourself the hassle of creating a dedicated wiki page, mailing list, and registration form for the event, use an established site like http://upcoming.yahoo.com/ or http://socialsoftware.meetup.com/, or even http://www.opensocial.org/events which provides all of this and more for free. In your event listing, include the core details such as date and time, location (along with driving directions), etc. as well as a description of the event and your target audience. Prospective attendees are able to RSVP directly from the listing, and the built-in discussion forum allows guests to submit their pre-event questions and post-event feedback. Most of these sites also allow for posting files, so you can add images, presentations, and so forth after the event concludes. Finally, if you want to host tutorials or other open source code for attendees to use during the event, you may also consider creating a new Google Code project (http://code.google.com/p).

Step 5: Prepare an information package

If you're expecting a large turn-out for your event, you should build an information package for the attendees and link to it from the wiki. These packages typically include the event's agenda, information on where the restrooms and snacks are located (feel free to provide a map here), instructions detailing how to connect to the guest wireless network, and general behavioral guidelines to follow such as the points listed here. Even a smaller turn-out could benefit from a simple announcement of all of this information before kick-off. Once complete, post the material (or a link to the material) to your event listing(s).

Step 6: Send a reminder

If your event page doesn't handle this automatically (many do), send your guests a message one or two days before the event. In addition to the logistics (when, where, etc.), specify what they'll need to bring (laptop, designs/mock-ups, etc) and what software they're expected to have installed before the event begins. Also, if your working with any environments (e.g. developer sandboxes) which whitelist users, make sure to remind them to sign up for access as soon as possible to ensure they're able to follow along during the event.

Step 7: Order sustenance

Since lectures and hackathon can span several hours, it is a good idea to provide food and beverage or ask attendees to bring food/beverage for themselves. We recommend providing simple food that can be eaten fairly fast like pizza or sandwiches, along with some snacks. Here's a sample progression:

• Juice, coffee, bagels/doughnuts if your hackathon kicks off mid-morning
• An entree for lunch along with assorted sides and drinks
• Cookies, chips, and other snacks for mid-afternoon
• Water, soda, coffee, and/or tea throughout

If you are unable to provide food, try to hold the hackathon near a commercial area so attendees can buy food/drink during breaks if they want to.

Step 8: Set up

Make sure you give yourself enough time to set up before the event starts. Some typical set-up tasks include:

• Make sure security and/or a receptionist at your meeting area knows to expect your guests and the turnout size expected. Leave them a sign-in sheet and the info. packages you have built (if any) so guests can be all set early-on. Also be sure to give the receptionist and/or security your email and phone number so they can contact you when people begin showing up.
• Set up the presentation laptop and make sure it's interfacing correctly with the projectors in the room.
• Set up a white board with any general information (basically things you don't want to repeat all day such as how to connect to the network or where the restrooms are – especially handy if you didn't build an information package).

Promote

Step 0: Set the event date and reserve the space

At a minimum, you should have a fixed date and location before beginning your advertising campaign in earnest. If a potential attendee only comes across your event listing once, you want to make sure it has the correct time and place on it.

Step 1: Publicize the event on opensocial.org

In addition to, or even in place of, creating an event listing on http://socialsoftware.meetup.com/ or a similar site, create a new notice on the OpenSocial Ning network at http://www.opensocial.org/events. All OpenSocial events should be registered here so any developers who are interested in learning and using the API can see which events are being planned in their area. You can either link to your official event listing from this notice or let prospective attendees RSVP directly from the listing.

Step 2: Create a flier for the event

The wiki in a flier form – the notice should be a simple flier with all of the relevant information about the event on a single sheet that you can leave at other meetings or post on bulletin boards ahead of the event.

Step 3: Post notices to a variety of online calendars/event directories

Since the target audience are developers, we recommend that you market the event via the following channels:

• Post a save-the-date in relevant discussion boards as soon as the event is scheduled.
• Post in other mailing lists with a technical audience that you belong to.
• Create a new Facebook event and invite your friends and encourage them to invite their own friends.
• Post on Upcoming.org, Meetup.com, eventful.com, and/or Craigslist.org.
• Post in local universities' computer science students mailing list(s).
• Blog about it in your own and other technical blogs.
• Invite your friends personally.
• Add to Google event calendar:
  • Name and timing of meeting
  • Event listing URL
• Advertise the event to local user groups who may be interested by sending a message to their events or announcement-only list.

Execute

Setting up an agenda is a highly recommended exercise and can help ensure that you are able to accomplish everything that you have in mind during the hackathon. The agenda should help you answer the following questions:

• What are you going to do when the guests show up in the morning?
• What material, if any, are you going to cover ahead of the hacking to get the hackers up to speed?
• Are you going to have people present at the hackathon? If so, when?

Use the following sample agenda as a guide. Keep in mind that you may have to tailor this depending on your attendees' knowledge of and experience with OpenSocial, so don't be discouraged if you don't get to everything listed here. For example, if the bulk of your attendees are unfamiliar with OpenSocial, you may want to spend more time on the intricacies of the API and programming model and devote less time to final presentations since the attendees have less time to work on individual projects. On the other hand, if most of the attendees have previous experience with OpenSocial, it makes sense to allocate more time to hacking and networking rather than making them sit through a tutorial.

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