That was the most challenging meetup I ever had, in a positive way, you may say, but still challenging. It was a joined meeup with Chicago Open Source Data Infrastructure Group. I came to their meetup several months ago and talked to their organizer, and we agreed to stay in touch. Later, he contacted me asking whether it would be possible to use our training center for their meetup. I said: unfortunately, not, and then he asked me whether I would be open to a joined meetup. we agreed on June 11 and announced it in our respective User Groups.
At first, the rate of RSVP was as usual: a couple of regulars responded right away, and then more and more responses were coming here and there. Usually, there is a spike of RSVPs in the last couple of days before the event. I was even a little bit worried that the response rate was slow in the beginning since Matty didn’t post the talk topic from “their” side. But then, all of a sudden, I saw more and more RSVPs, and when the total number on both meetups got to sixty-five, I started to panic. Usually, I have 40-45 RSVPs, and I expect 25-30 people to show up, and I have all the formulas how to calculate the right number of pizzas, and they won’t work for a bigger numbers.
By the end of the day on Monday, the total number of RSVPs (not counting those were people forgot to put their full names) was eighty-six! I was unsure whether the printing machine at the security desk was working (it didn’t work the last two times), so I decided to print the list and to ask security to prepare the bdges in advance.
It turned out that great minds think alike, and they already came up with that same idea (and the printer was working!). I ordered $800 worth of pizza and almost killed myself bringing the drinks from CVS all by myself (I was a complete idiot about that, there were people whom I could ask, and I didn’t!)
Fifty two people showed up! It was amazing! And everything worked fine with Zoom. We had great networking both before and after the talks, and several people approached me and asked whether they could help with future meetups. However, there is one thing I started to worry about. I was not presenting, I just said a couple f words in the beginning. Still, there was a line of people who wanted to talk to me after the meetup. You can usually see this line after a very successful conference presentation. A dozen people wanted to talk to me to know my opinion about some aspects of Postgres and their career and life in general :).
I find this concerning because the meetup should be about Postgres, not about me. If I won’t be there, things won’t happen, and that’s something I need to work on.
Hettie's Reflections 