Feedback from BordeauxJUG development #102
Description
Hi! 👋
As discussed with @TomCools, here is the feedback I could gather from the BordeauxJUG founder and the following JUG leader.
The Bordeaux JUG has been created at the end of 2008. It got registered as a non-profit organization roughly 1 year after, at the end of 2009. At that time, the town of Bordeaux did not have much meetups, and Java was a trendy language. So they started very simple. For the place, the creator of the JUG was a part-time teacher at a local engineering school, ENSEIRB-MATMECA, he just got the authorization to book a room in the evening. They found a sponsor to pay for the pizzas and they started like that. It was enough to bring people. The declaration of the non-profit made it easier for sponsoring, companies can declare it as a donation so it's cheaper due to the tax reduction, and then the association was structured to buy some small equipment. It brought a bit of administrative tasks but a small non-profit in France is easy to manage.
The following JUG leader thinks for him the sweet spot for running a JUG is around 7 motivated people, as members of the non-profit and responsible to keep things running. It allowed them to manage temporary unavailability of some members or if there is some extra work to produce. This may be an interesting number to keep in mind if the long-term goal is then to seed local JUGs. Please note he stayed a JUG leader for 3 years (and then became the founder and leader of the local conference for 3 years), so it may have been too intense!
Around this core, it is important to try to build a network to broadcast the communication and events around the JUG, identify new speakers and talks, etc.
Regarding the hosting, for them it should be to look to have the place provided for free, and using sponsors to cover for food expenses. They insisted on the fact that the goal is mostly to aim to extend the event. The talk is actually just an excuse for people to meet and talk, to create connections and build a community, what happens after is at least as important as the talk itself.
The Bordeaux JUG always stick to one place, they consider it as an important parameter for them. In Bordeaux, the JUG is held in the suburbs, while the JavaScript meetup is more downtown. They see that people going to the JUG are not the same as the ones going to the JavaScript one, and it's not only a question of language, but also of location. If the goal is to create some fidelity, in order to identify people to seed local JUGs, it could be interesting to have recurrent places in the different visited towns.
They also shared that launching a few events was kind of easy, the hard part was to keep things going on the long term.
Since quite some time, the Bordeaux JUG does a live streaming and all talks are published on YouTube. The Bordeaux JUG does not own any video material. The trick is after being a JUG leader for 3 years, the following JUG leader stepped down and created a 1 day conference, initially hosted in the same school. It was gathering 500 people at that time, registered under a new dedicated independent non-profit. With that, he has been able to get bigger sponsorship and this association has been able to buy a few sets of basic video recording equipment. To prevent this equipment to just take dust for a year, and because they needed some people to help during the conference to record the talks, they shared this recording sets to some local meetups, including the JUG. This way, they got people who trained themselves during the JUG sessions all year long, and who would be able to help during the conference. The local meetups were gaining visibility by publishing their sessions on YouTube. This is how they have been able to create synergies, by having a local conference bringing means, and local chapters bringing people.
This may be interesting to check if some conference organizer groups own some recording sets and may be open to share one. It could be also interesting to check with them if they would be interested to use some JUG sessions to train some of their members if they have some newcomers on their side. This could benefit everyone.
Also, in Bordeaux, the local chapters members and leaders were the main source of helpers the day of the conference. Maybe some people, for example in the DevoxxBE crew, may be interested to join the JUG awith bigger responsibilities in the JUG as the ones they have for Devoxx, this is an opportunity for them to get some additional experience and then step up later for the big conference.