We are about to hit our 100th session up at LeanCoffeeTO - the community up here is on point and thriving -

We seem to have successfully learned to avoid shitty networking meetups -

How are the communities holding up in other parts of the planet?

Would love to hear about some other successful meetup strategies -

Peace -

Successful meetup strategy #2245: Have Mark Reale in your meetup

for us in NYC it's all about the speakers, and we don't force it in a month where we don't have a speaker. Our typical format is an informal interview with a founder or practioner, with the occasional VC thrown in, and open floor to audience questions. The group is 3000+ plus but we keep each meetup to under 100 people to keep the vibe intimate. So far it has been working.

The #LeanDC meetup has one of my favorite meetup strategies.

They take a new team and gave them 10 minutes to present at the next three events over three months.

It was like a mini-accelerator, where the teams presented their progress, experiments, and biggest risks.

The organizers and audience would critique, add suggestions, and resources.

I think this format has huge potential because it makes the whole process real for the audience.