Blog Yellek

One of my colleagues Bill Malkin recently sent out in email 18 really good tips on how to organize a user group meeting. I asked his permission to re-post them here for your edification:

After a year and a bit of organizing the IT Architecture SIG, I thought I’d
pass on a few tips to those considering organizing presentations themselves.
These are tips that don’t seem to be mentioned in the usual presentation
skills courses. We all learn by our mistakes so below are basically a list
of mistakes I have made in the past 15 months.

Make sure you:

1. 1. Find out when the entrance to the venue gets locked. (Sometimes there are even a series of locked entrances and lifts.) Most importantly, don’t get yourself locked out of the venue when looking to see if there are any more attendees. You will only find that the event succeeds better without you anyway.
2. Put your mobile phone number on a sign at the entrance in case all else fails. It’s very lonely out there in the cold feeling rejected by your peers. This can only be remedied by a warm and sincere hug.
3. Find out whether people can get out of the venue when the presentation finishes. This is not really a problem as the attendees have the opportunity to wander around inside the building discovering all sorts of interesting things.
4. Ask where the toilets are, if they are locked and, if they are, how they are unlocked. Nobody likes to see their attendees in tears.
5. Find out where to buy reasonably priced food, ie pizza, and what quantity and types. (I buy one party-sized pizza per eight attendees. The first one must be Vegetarian, the second Hawaiian, and the third probably Meat-Lovers. This is never enough though but it’s all we can afford. It’s heart-breaking.)
6. Find out where to buy the drinks and what quantity and types. (I buy a bottle of wine and three stubbies for every eight attendees. The first two bottles of wine must be red, the third white, and so on. (The fully-documented algorithm is available on request.) The venues always seem to be able to supply free tea, coffee, soft drinks, etc. However, I always buy a bottle of Lift just in case. Lift seems to be very popular. People seem to either love or hate Coke so that’s no good. Aim for the lowest common denominator so that people are offended equally.)
7. Work out how to get the drinks and food to the venue. Walking through the city with a shopping trolley full of food, beer and wine certainly attracts a lot of interest. So far I haven’t been mugged although it does seem to bring out the neanderthal in a man. (Yes, neanderthals were actually very fond of beer. They used to eat yeast and hops and then it brewed in their stomachs. Homo Erectus didn’t introduce wine until much later. The only reason they learnt to stand erect was so that the wine didn’t spill. The intake of too much wine however reverts us back to quadrupeds.)
8. Work out how to keep the beer cold until people start turning up. The fridge at each venue is either hard to find or full. The contents of the fridge also tells you a lot about a venue. It’s obvious that Excom Education runs classes for IT students for instance, as the fridge is absolutely full of Coke.
9. Have cash on you when the pizzas turn up. When ordering you can often purchase on credit card, but if you haven’t done this, the pizza delivery guy only takes cash. When all else fails, they usually know where the nearest ATM is and you only need to tip them about $5 to get a lift there and back. You can’t get a receipt for that though.
10. Work out how to get the left over drinks and food home again. The good old shopping trolley again. Bus drivers always comment.
11. Understand that it’s OK to run out of food but not drinks. Which is good as the food is very expensive compared to the drinks. (Again, distressing, but we IT Architects are nothing if not survivors.)
12. Understand the importance of (a) getting receipts, and (b) not losing the damn things. They are as good as cash even though losing a $50 receipt doesn’t feel as bad as losing a $50 note. I suppose the difference is that you know who ended up with the $50 note.
13. Only buy bottles of wine and beer with screw tops. (This is very hard to remember when you are agonising over which wines to buy. Thankfully, Coopers Pale Ale is relatively cheap and popular, and shows you are a true patriot. Thankfully too it’s also drinkable. I used to live in Queensland. Have any of you tried XXXX?)
14. Are aware that these venues never have wine glasses but people are happy with ordinary glasses, even plastic cups, but not really keen on mugs. (It’s probably good not to have proper wine glasses as people appear a lot more down to earth and approachable when they are drinking from plastic cups.)
15. Are aware that, once people start eating, drinking and talking, it’s hard to get them to sit down and ready for the speaker. However, it is very rude to try and rush them. Different conversations take varying lengths of time to properly wind up. When some people start moving towards the seats the others will follow. Only then is verbal abuse most appropriate and enjoyable.
16. Know that the main reason people attend a presentation is because of their interest in the topic and/or speaker. (Pretty obvious.)
17. Realise that, however, the main reasons people actually enjoy the presentation are the opportunity of meeting colleagues and newcomers, the opportunity to discuss topics of common interest, being able to just relax, and being able to actually have time to enjoy, and be proud of, being in the profession.
18. Understand that the less interaction there is between the presenter and the audience, the shorter the presentation should be. No matter how good the presentation is, if it goes too long you can actually see the event dying right in front of your eyes. Thankfully we haven’t killed or even maimed any of our events so far.

Over the past 15 months all of our speakers have been excellent, and it has
been great to see attendees, many of whom having turned up looking pretty
stressed and tired, leaving reinvigorated and happy. Some of this positive
effect can be attributed to the speaker, some to the (albeit, basic) food
and drinks, some to Allan English (Excom Education) and I running around
making sure things are going somewhat smoothly, but most of all because,
quite simply, we are all social animals and we continually need to socialise
in order to gain further direction, ideas and inspiration. Congratulations
are therefore in order to the attendees for doing this so well for each
other. (Oh yes, and thanks Allan!)

Well that’s about all I wanted to say except that I look forward to seeing
you again at the next presentation!

Kind regards
Bill

PS If anyone has any further tips or comments, or are willing to confess to
any embarrassing blunders they have made, I (and many others) would be very keen to hear them!

PPS Hopefully you can tell the difference between my serious pieces of
advice above and my tongue-in-cheek advice. If you take any of my advice and
it doesn’t turn out very well then it must have been tongue-in-cheek. You
should’ve taken the other advice.

Disclaimer: I don’t drink and don’t condone drinking to excess but many people do enjoy a social drink responsibly.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 6:28 pm and is filed under tech, life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.