This document discusses organizing and participating in Cloud Foundry user groups. It provides tips for finding existing groups on Meetup.com, deciding whether to start a new group, planning events with good speakers and content, promoting events, and sustaining a group over time. Organizing groups can help technology adoption, build skills and networks, and find job opportunities. Successful events have relevant content, great speakers, good venues, and high attendance.

1. Finding and Organizing a Great
Cloud Foundry User Group
Daniel Krook, Animesh Singh, Manuel Silveyra

2. What you’ll learn today
• Why meetups are so popular and
why you should get involved
• Where you can find an active
local Cloud Foundry group
• How you can organize - and
sustain - a strong community

3. About us
Daniel Krook
• New York City Cloud Foundry Meetup
• 643 members
• Organizer since March 2014
Animesh Singh
• Silicon Valley Cloud Foundry Meetup
• 1,182 members
• Organizer since June 2014
Manuel Silveyra
• Austin Cloud Foundry Meetup
• 140 members
• Organizer since January 2015
@DanielKrook
bit.ly/nyccf
@AnimeshSingh
bit.ly/svlcf
@Manuel_Silveyra
bit.ly/auscf

4. Meetups are social events for building and sharing knowledge
Computer user groups
have been around for
decades, but social
media has made them
more accessible
...There are no hard and fast rules however
• Organizational formality varies
• RSVPs may require payment (venue reservation, speaker costs)
• Refreshments are often provided
Meetups generally…
• Are regularly scheduled (often monthly)
• Are semi-structured (2 or 3 hour agenda)
• Have one speaker, several lightning talks, or a panel
• Take place after work hours
• Are hosted at an office, bar, or coffee shop
• Are free and open to the public (with an RSVP)

5. Meetups aren’t long, but they provide ample time for networking
and conversation before and after the primary presentation
Goals for a sample one hour talk
1. Introduce the technical audience to a new
open source project
2. Solicit attendee feedback during the session
and in post meeting conversation
3. Invite them to contribute code or otherwise
report issues on GitHub
6:00 – 6:30pm
Pre-meeting conversation, networking, refreshments
6:30 – 7:30pm
Presentation, demos, Q&A
7:30 – 8:00pm
Post-meeting conversation, optional trip to a nearby bar/restaurant
Agenda for a sample two hour meeting

6. There are many professional benefits that come from
attending, speaking at, and organizing a meetup
Learn a new technology like CF
• Catch a live presentation and demo
• Participate in an interactive conversation
• Meet SMEs willing to teach
After a few meetups you’ll...
• Understand the ecosystem of the technology
• Have a solid grasp of the technology
• Had a change to try and validate iterations of
experimentation
In time you will…
• Acquire a new skillset (for free!)
• Connect with a network of experts
for answers
• Establish your own eminence as a
local expert
• Find talent for your own company
• Find job opportunities

7. Meetup.com is the best place to find new groups and events near you
Search Meetup.com
Search by topic and location
There may be more than one
group for a given keyword
Edit your Meetup profile
Add topics of interest to your
profile to be alerted to new
events
Join groups and attend events
As you join related meetups,
you’ll find connections to other
similar groups

8. Do some research and planning before you organize a new Cloud Foundry group
Are you sure you want to start a new meetup group?
• Meetup organization is not trivial and may have startup costs
• Do your best to find an existing group and collaborate with others
• It can be counter productive to both groups to start a brand new group
Decide on your niche and make sure it’s broad enough
• Is “Cloud Foundry” too narrow a topic? Would a general PaaS group fit your market?
• Set up your Meetup.com group page with a description and topics
• Review the helpful OpenStack user groups HOWTO: http://bit.ly/os-ug-tips
Find a venue and sponsors
• Start with your own company and or Cloud Foundry partner companies
• But also consider partner, customer, academic, co-working venues
• Coffee shops, restaurants, and bars may offer private areas with projection equipment
Confirm a topic and speaker, then schedule an event!
• Stick to a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday evening
• August, November, and December have poor turnout due to holidays and vacations
• Consider other meetup group schedules or events that could coincide

9. A successful event has four important characteristics
Real world
example
showing how
to use vendor
value added
services in
Cloud
Foundry
Great content
Relevant and
respected
speaker with
great
audience
interactivity
Great speaker(s)
Lots of space,
free food,
modern
projection
equipment
Great venue
Room for 100
(based on 250
RSVPs) and
opportunity
for attendees
to interact
Great attendance
Focus on these for each meetup event you organize

10. Identify great content for your event
Cloud Foundry
architecture and demo
Customer stories and
use cases
OpenStack and Docker
Integration
Evolve with your
audience. Be open to
change from members
and the market.

11. Cornelia Davis
Director of Platform Engineering at Pivotal
Gave a hands on demo of Java Spring
applications deployed from an IDE to Cloud
Foundry
Sam Ramji
CEO of the Cloud Foundry Foundation
Discussed the value of Cloud Foundry for the
business as well as the technical side of the
house
René Welches
Architect at hybris (an SAP company)
Described how Cloud Foundry is deployed
in a industrial microservices e-commerce
application at SAP
Find a great speaker for your event
Heard a compelling talk
at CF Summit?
Ask the speaker if they
will be in your area in
the coming months.
Coordinate with other
groups to share
speakers who may be
travelling through the
area for other events

12. Engage a great sponsor and/or venue for your event
Always keep at least one
upcoming meetup topic on
the schedule (and add
placeholders for venue
reservations with requests
for topics from members)
Members of the Cloud
Foundry Foundation may
have locations in your area.
Engage them to see if they
are interested in hosting or
sponsoring a meetup.

13. Spread the word, attract attendees, build community
Create your
group page
and
schedule an
event
• Set up a Meetup group
• Configure keywords and
topics
• Reduce barriers (such as
mandatory questions) for
those joining
Promote
the event
through
social
media
• Promote on Twitter
• Promote on LinkedIn
• Follow a predictable
schedule and
announcement cadence
Follow up by
publishing
slides and
soliciting
feedback
• Share content on
SlideShare
• Post pictures to the event
page
• Send a summary and
solicit feedback
Think of collateral reuse
beyond the meetup, and
building on the
conversations that came
out of it for future topics
or articles.
Coordinate with other
local groups to allow for
cross-pollination of
group members
bit.ly/os-ug-tips

14. Other tips for organizing a great user group
Don't underestimate the effort to
sustain a group – mentor others
and groom co-organizers.
Be the community catalyst.
More tips from Mike Schinkel:
bit.ly/meetup-bp

15. A personal journey – Amplify your effect!"
@AnimeshSingh

16. Why? Find your motivation
http://www.motivationals.org/demotivational-posters-15410
All along the simple act
of getting together in
person to learn, share,
and collaborate has
driven open technology
forward and is one of
the most powerful ways
to participate in the
open source
community.

17. I work on IBM Bluemix
Design Thinking
Containers
Extreme
Agile
Mobile
IoT
APIs
Microservices

18. Motivation – good precedents and organizational culture
http://www.dopefun.com/life-of-a-fresher

19. 1. Funding for Meetups
2. Good technical library
of content and
speakers willing to
share
knowledge
3. Incentives and rewards
for employees willing to
go that extra mile and
become socially relevant
in the technical and
open source community
Motivation – good precedents and organizational culture

20. http://bluemix.meetup.com/
Motivation – good precedents and organizational culture

21. My techniques
http://photos.internetdunia.com/

22. Techniques – Find a superstar – Speakers and partner groups

23. Techniques – Find a superstar – relevant content

24. Techniques – Find a superstar – Relevant content: Cloud Foundry on OpenStack
PaaS
Integration
IaaS
UAA
Router
DEA Pool
Apps
Service Connector
Health Manager
Messaging
Cloud Controller
Build Packs
Service Nodes
BOSH
Cloud Provider Interface
• Static / floating ips
• Persistent disks
• Custom VM
Configurations
• Specialized
Security groups

25. Techniques – Find a superstar – Relevant content: Cloud Foundry and Internet of Things
Connect
Collect
Manage
Simple APIs
Assemble
Build
Real Time MQTT
REST
internetofthings.ibmcloud.com
bluemix.net

26. Techniques – Spread awareness and advertise (blogs, Twitter etc.)

27. Rewards and Outcomes
fairy-tales-fables-business.blogspot.com

28. Rewards – Great interaction, direct feedback from attendees and community
"I followed the Bay Area PaaS,
Cloud Foundry & Bluemix Meetup
virtually (I’m based in London). Great
presentation.”
"Hi Animesh, It was a very
successful meetup yesterday with an
impressive list of demos. Are these
demos available for bluemix starters
to tryout?”
”Hi Animesh, Thanks for a great
meetup this week on BlueMix! I
wanted to follow-up with you on our
conversation at the end of the
meetup regarding academic use of
BlueMix in a class I'm teaching"
"@Michael Fraenkel thanks for the dea go insights was worth the
wait, appreciate, if you can share links for PPT"
"It's an amazing meetup , thanks for Animesh &Ferran &Michael
sharing PPT , Diego project looks very good :) In china , Huawei
is help Pivotal & IBM to organizing china cloud foundry meetup ,
it's plan organize in Shanghai、Shenzhen、Nanjing、Hangzhou­
and other cities”
"I learned a lot about Cloud Foundry and Bluemix at the meet-
up. Thanks for info, pizza, and T-shirt!”
”Hey Animesh, Thank you for hosting this. This meetup was
done very well, and you are a dynamic and excellent speaker. I
can't wait to see you on TED motivating the world. One of the
persons on your team presented on Twillo. I was seeing if I could
get his name?

29. Rewards – Great for social media presence – Many times our
content was featured on SlideShare and Twitter

30. Rewards – Combining social media with meetup content enables global reach
55K SlideShare views
http://www.slideshare.net/AnimeshSingh
Across the globe from IBMers,
Universities and companies like HP,
Pivotal, RedHat, Oracle,
Salesforce, Comcast, BNY,
Huawei, Hitachi etc.
7K Tweets about our content
Leading to 1.5 Million Reach!

31. Rewards – Recognition!

32. And all this while, meeting great people and making some great friends along the way!

33. What you learned today
• Why meetups are so popular and
why you should get involved
• Where you can find an active
local Cloud Foundry group
• How you can organize - and
sustain - a strong community

34. Join us and help build the Cloud Foundry Community
Daniel Krook
• New York City Cloud Foundry Meetup
• 643 members
• Organizer since March 2014
Animesh Singh
• Silicon Valley Cloud Foundry Meetup
• 1,182 members
• Organizer since June 2014
Manuel Silveyra
• Austin Cloud Foundry Meetup
• 140 members
• Organizer since January 2015
@DanielKrook
bit.ly/nyccf
@AnimeshSingh
bit.ly/svlcf
@Manuel_Silveyra
bit.ly/auscf
bit.ly/ibm-cf-jobs