A Get Together Checklist

2010-10-06 19:38 More posts about Checklist Freetime Get Together Hacking
Still on the list of potentially interesting books: The Checklist Manifesto - explaining why checklists can still be valuable - especially for complex problems and tasks.

Though not very complex, I chose to come up with a checklist for running a Hadoop Get Together in Berlin as an exercise. I'm trying to stick with advise provided by the Checklist for Checklists.

Parties involved


  • Find two to three speakers two months in advance.
  • Find a sponsor for the videos.

Gathering information


  • Double check time and date with all speakers and newthinking store.
  • Get name, title, abstract from the speakers.
  • Get logo and exact conditions from sponsor.

Spreading the word


  • Put together an announcement text including thanks to video and venue sponsors.
  • Publish the event on Upcoming.
  • Publish the event on Xing.
  • Augment the announcement text by the Xing event and Upcoming links.
  • Send a newsletter to the Meetup Xing group.
  • Send the text to the Get Together mailing list, and if appropriate to the Hadoop, HBase, katta, Lucene, Solr and Mahout mailing lists.
  • On event day send a reminder to the Get Together mailing list
  • Create meetup intro slides including thanks for the sponsors, schedule, announcements of future events.

During the meetup


  • Mention newthinking bar during introduction.
  • Self-introduction of all participants.
  • Get mail addresses of future mailing list subscribers.
  • Keep presentations at 30 to 40 minutes.
  • Get speakers' slides.

After the event


  • Publish talks' slides.
  • Publish links to videos.


The more meetups you have run the larger the chance of the main organiser getting sick the day the meetup takes place. To avoid having to re-schedule the event make sure there are people that are capable and willing to take over moderation.