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Old 08-01-2009, 12:49 PM   #49 (permalink)
Bruce Achterberg
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Location: New South Wales, Australia (GMT+10)
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Default Suggestions

Some suggestions to spark ideas for future meeups:

Arrange specific spots to meet. If possible, meet at a specific spot, or arrange for people to bring some sort of identifier (such as Steve's book), or something.

Make it easier to identify the group. When/if more people come, it'd be great if someone could come, say, 5 minutes early and wait at a table with a copy of Steve's book on it so people can easily recognise where the group is.

Opportunities for some more structured participation (maybe). I'd love to see a segment where people can discuss or simply ask for some help applying some of Steve's principles (from his book) and ideas (or other related personal development ideas and concepts) to current projects and life areas people are working on. This is probably my Toastmasters side showing through, but I find participation like this is great for keeping people engaged and giving everyone a chance to get involved in the meeting (it was easy enough for three of us to speak this time, but if there are more people, making sure everyone gets a chance to participate does become a factor). If there are lots of people, you can make sure everyone gets a chance by simply allocating a certain time to discuss one idea so you spare enough time for everybody to get an opportunity to participate.

I think this meetup was okay being the first one, but I feel it'd be nice to balance the social time with some interaction that could help people with their current growth projects and challenges (if the meetup goes for 2 hours, perhaps people could get to know each other and mix and mingle for 1 hour, then the remaining hour could be slit up to cater to everyone who would like to discuss a challenge or life area they're working on and would like some feedback on. Even if some people don't participate in the segment in the second hour, I still think they might learn something or at least get some ideas or hear something interesting from listening to other people discuss their current projects and the groups' ideas of how to apply personal development principles to said projects).

I think this could increase the "take home value" of the meetups and keep people coming back. As a former member of Toastmasters, I learned that one of the reasons people keep coming back to Toastmasters is that it helps them with a current goal that they have. Once they complete the goal they don't always come back (although some do), but helping people with their current goals (directly or indirectly) makes it easier for people to justify taking time out of their (quite often busy) schedules to go to Toastmasters (and the great thing is, once they do go, they get indirect benefits that go far beyond just helping them with their current project or goal, as I'm sure any Toastmaster would say if you spoke to them).

This particular idea might be better suited to a more mature meetup group (i.e. a group that's been meeting for a few months and thus has more familiarity between those who attend and greater numbers of people attending), or even a different type of meetup.

* * *

Yynatago, Elevation--thanks again for kick-starting the Sydney meetups.
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