What kinds of great things can we do with our user group (PHP/web focused)? We meet monthly and have pretty regular attendance. We've got a great location that provides us their conference room and food, and the attendees all are excited to keep coming to listen to a couple of us rotating through to put on slide show presentations/demos. There are other user groups in the area (.NET, Rails, JS), but from what I understand, our attendance is generally the best in the area.
What I'm wondering is what other kinds of activities others do or have done with their user groups. Community/Non-profit projects? School/college activities? Working with local government/organizations to educate their workforce?
What's been your experience starting and maintaining these kinds of additional activities? How do you drum up user group excitement and community support for them? What are some pitfalls to look for, and how did you overcome them?
Milica Maksimović
founder Literally.dev, ex-Growth @wasp, former Community Manager @Hashnode
You can:
a) Organize free workshops for people who want to get started with PHP.
b) Do some hackathons and build free open-source apps that can somehow help your community.
c) Do some work that could help some charities or your community in any way.
You can check out Rails Girls activities for more ideas.