We're excited to announce that Wednesday, April 6th, 2011, is World-Wide Stack Overflow MeetUp Day!
We commonly say that Stack Overflow is run by the community. We also commonly say that Stack Overflow is not a social networking site. There's no private messaging. There's no "friends" list. The entire focus is on the knowledge shared. So, when interest arises to organize world-wide "meet ups", we need a little help from you.
Stack Overflow users are a diverse group of people, spread all over the world (there’s a lot of green on that map!). To get everyone involved in this year's MeetUp, we would like to organize into local groups by getting everyone in each area together... all at the same time. We are making it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the groups already meeting up face-to-face. Meetups.com provides just that service.
Get Involved
Go to meetup.com/stackoverflow to find your local Stack Overflow MeetUp group. If there is no group in your area, start one! Once some other folks in your area say they're interested, you can choose an exact location (library, community center, restaurant, etc) to meet. Someone can even step up to be the organizer to help move the process along.
Get to Know the Community
There is a lot of flexibility in what you can do with your MeetUp. Meet just to chat, host a special guest speaker, organize volunteer activities, or just organize a social gathering with some virtual friends (RockBand anyone?). We've set up a room on Stack Overflow's chat where you can trade ideas.
Get the Word Out!
Join your local community (or create a new community location) on meetup.com/stackoverflow. If there’s not yet an organizer, you can sign up to organize the event or leave that for later. Once you've joined your community, help us spread the word to other members of the Stack Overflow community so that they get involved too! The more people that join, the better the MeetUp will be.
Here are some suggestions about how you can spread the word:
- Use the hashtag #SOMeetup on Twitter, Flickr and YouTube when posting about Stack Overflow MeetUps
- Post a link to your local MeetUp page on Facebook and Twitter, email the page to your friends, promote in blog posts, on HN, etc
- Use the custom Stack Overflow MeetUp widgets
We want these MeetUps to be a huge success, so we'll do our part to help by sending out door prizes to meetups that build up a good following. At the MeetUp, take lots of pictures! We can’t wait to see pictures and hear stories of your MeetUps get posted after the event. They may just show up in a blog post reminiscing about the wonderful stories of the World-Wide Stack Overflow MeetUp 2011!
See you April 6!