Indie Hackers Cape Town: The Maker’s MeetUp
Adrian Bunge, Kerry Beetge and I hosted the second monthly Indie Hackers MeetUp on the Jan 29th, 2019. Following our first MeetUp, and the great feedback we received from it, we went into planning the next one with a huge emphasis on our key takeaways:
A brief introduction
Indie Hackers is a community where makers come together to share their experiences, give and receive feedback, and rely on each other for support.
It is also where the makers of profitable businesses and side projects can share their stories transparently, and where entrepreneurs can come to read and learn from those examples.
Planning the MeetUp
Our goals for the MeetUp mostly stayed the same:
- Motivate collaboration and learning at the MeetUp
- Enable the flow of ideas, learnings and experiences between all attendees
- Create an environment that makes it super easy to network
The format
We stuck with the unConferencing method of organising events, and using dot voting to decide on which topics to discuss. My first article about the first MeetUp gives a breakdown on how this format works.
What we changed
Topics allocation
The feedback from the first event indicated that we had too many topics (3), and thus not enough time per topic, and that the conversations weren’t intricate enough for the topics. We decided to reduce the number of topics per group to 2, and increase the discussion time from 10 to 20 minutes.
The rule of two feet
Our intention for the first meetup was to have seperate rooms from which people could move around if they felt the current topic of discussion was not interesting.
Our hypothesis was shattered by Newton’s Law of Unconferencing: A Maker in a seat will remain in said seat unless acted upon by an external force (This is not a thing btw, don’t quote me on it). To resolve this, we laid out the groups in the same open area, near each other and explicitly asked attendees to move as often as we could.
The topics are half the story
We value the topic voting and discussions, but from the first MeetUp, by the discovery of another, we identified that this wasn’t the gem we were looking for — but instead was:
The conversations after the event.
We increased the duration of the MeetUp to 2 hours, to allow for a 30 minute window after topic discussion where attendees could have food and drinks while engaging in conversation. The topic discussion serve two objectives: first, to allow the sharing of ideas and experiences; and second, to allow people to get familiar — which works wonders for the post MeetUp discussions.
How it went
We had around 18 people at the MeetUp, which we split up into 3 groups; each with a facilitator. After the idea seeding phase, we had a total of 35 cards (each representing a potential topic of discussion) submitted. Each person in the group was given the opportunity to sell the idea behind their cards, which was followed by dot voting.
The topics that made it into the discussion were:
- The future of work
- 1000 R10’s or 10 R1000's
- How do we hire more women in tech
- Tech for good
- Project support and funding
- Strategic planning within the business/idea context
We saw a lot of movement between groups this time round, and much more passion expressed for the ideas. Furthermore, the networking session that naturally occurred after the topic discussion went on over an hour — with contact details being exchanged like stocks!
We’re hosting the next one on the 26th of Feb, 2019. Hope to see you there!
