Berlin Buzzwords - Associated Events #

Back in 2011 I had a weird idea: Berlin Buzzwords as a core event kicks off on Sunday evening with a Barcamp but closes on Tuesday evening. There’s way too little time to meet with all the interesting people. On the other hand the organising team really was all tired on Tuesday evening, so just adding another day at the end wasn’t really an option.

Now Berlin is known as one of the hottest European Startup Capitals. There’s literally at least one meetup for any topic you can imagine. There’s co-working spaces and companies happy to welcome developers for a one day meetup or Hackathon. So the idea was born to invite people to organise meetups, hackathons, workshops, unconferences or any kind of dev session of their choosing on Wednesday after Berlin Buzzwords - the goal being to keep Buzzwords speakers and attendees in town for longer.

In the mean time several meetup groups actually started by having their first event on Wednesday after Berlin Buzzwords. It’s grown increasingly easy to find meetup space for these Wednesday meetups.

So how does it work? Essentially it’s very easy: All that is needed is one person interested in a particular technology who is willing to organise a meetup for 20 to 120 people in Berlin on Wednesday after Buzzwords (or the weekend before, or the weekend after, it’s really up to you).

It’d be greatly appreciated if you get in touch with info@berlinbuzzwords.de or even submit your meetup through the official CfP. In return it will receive marketing help and will be included in the official schedule page. (Note: Meetups are accepted as they come in - no review phase, no nothing).

If you need help finding a venue for your meetup (either for free or for rent, up to your preference) talking to info@berlinbuzzwords.de will help you. We’ll get you in touch with local startups, co-working spaces and event venues.

Also remember - you don’t need to be an expert in the topic you are organising the meetup for. All you need is justified interest in the topic. Don’t be shy to invite your favourite developers as speakers for your meetup. Don’t shy away from even approaching some of the Berlin Buzzwords speakers.

If you are a developer yourself think about turning your Wednesday event into a hackathon - either in order to get more users familiar with your project or to gt the next release out the door together with other people working on your project also attending Buzzwords. This kind of approach really is the reason why there is a correlation between the date Berlin Buzzwords takes place and Mahout release dates in summer. (If you need inspiration on what it takes to organise a well working Hackathon - a quick search on your favourite search engine for “hackathon howto” should surface plenty of documentation.)