Idea for a First User Group Meetup?

Events
#1

I setup a “Haskell User Group” a while a go for Tallinn/Estonia where I live.

Comparing to the neighbor meetup in Helsink, ours is tiny…

But we have to start somewhere… I have managed to meet a few of people in the group in private already, everyone is up for it.

Now it comes to the idea for the first meetup. I have been thinking about an experience sharing session of how everyone is dealing with Haskell tooling nowadays.

Any suggestions? And anyone who also has a local user group could share their experience too?

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#2

Asking everybody what they do is probably a good idea, but depending on people might fall flat pretty quickly. You probably then need a backup plan and prepare a presentation on something (what you would do the next week anyway). That way you are sure that you have somethnig to fill the time, and show people what they are expecting to do.
If you don’t have to show it, then it’ll be for another time.

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#3

Great, more user groups! I hope it goes well!

I would probably try to have someone (yourself) give a talk, maybe 30-60min. This every everyone gets something out of the meeting, even those who don’t have projects to show off, and there is something to get the discussion at the informal part afterwards (dinner maybe) going.

Of course, before the presentation everyone can introduce themselves, including how they are using Haskell, if at all, and why they are here.

Talking about tooling might be a bit too navel-gazing… I’d first want to talk about what one can do with Haskell, and then how to do it convenient. Unless everyone really is already “sold” on Haskell. And even then…

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#4

Go take a drink together in a bar, we do that in Paris, it works wonders.

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#5

I would like to report back that the first event exceeded my expectation, and I can’t wait to have the second one schedule in a month or two.

What we have done:

  1. Surprise @chreekat joined all the way from Helsinki with us.
  2. Turnout The meetup had 10+ people, 8 joined in person and the rest via the zoom call. One complete newbie and curious about Haskell, a few prio-Haskellers still interested, and the rest actively using Haskell.
  3. Shilling A few of us we have shilled ZuriHac2023 a lot to everyone that how wonderful the event was. I hope we would have a few more people from here going to ZuriHac 2024!
  4. Banter We had a short session of tooling experience sharing (and a bit of ranting too :slight_smile: )
  5. I volunteered myself for a talk about a project of mine using linear haskell, recording is available here.
  6. A few of us continued for some beers later.

I really encourage everyone to have your own HUG (Haskell User Group) too, don’t wait for others, it will be fun!

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Tallinn Haskell User Group (TLL-HUG) 2023 September Meetup
#6

That’s great, I hope it will keep going like that!

3 Likes