Suggestions welcome: Structure for Humane Tech Meetups

Hey everyone! So I’m working with a few members of our community to organize a gathering in the bay area later this month (May 19 and May 26 are the popular dates at the moment) and I was wondering if people have ideas and suggestions for the structure of a typical Humane Tech meetup.

Here are two ideas that I have below, which is dependent on how many people are expected to arrive. Feel free to share your ideas in this thread so that we can all come up with a structure that we can all use and follow.

Idea 1: 50+ attendees

Venue: University hall, co-working space with public area, Breather room

  • Networking. Let people settle in, meet people, eat food. (30 min)
  • A quick intro explaining the purpose of the meetup. (2 min)
  • Talks from people in the tech industry sharing their perspectives. (1 hour)
  • Everyone who gave a talk would then gather and sit down in a Fireside chat to discuss certain topics and related to Humane Tech. Moderator would have to make sure that the discussion is going smoothly and that the important topics are covered within the time limit. (30 min)
  • Q&A session with the live audience. (15 min)
  • Wrap up the event, thank everyone for attending, and tell everyone to go to the humane tech forum to learn more and interact with other members of the community. (2 min)
  • Networking.
  • Clean up.

Idea 2: 5-20 attendees

Venue: Cafe, coffee-shop, lounge, someone’s house

  • Networking + food (30 min)
  • Quick intro of the meetup (2 min)
  • Everyone introduces themselves, the projects they are working on, and why they are advocates of humane tech (15 min)
  • We all have a casual group conversation on topics related to humane tech. (1 hour)
  • Discuss and brainstorm plans for future meetups. (15-30 min)
  • Wrap up

That’s all I got for now. Looking forward to getting your thoughts!

Cheers,

Ferjohn Maglalang
www.civility.social

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Let me check with my colleagues in my medical community at UCSF Medical Center. Maybe I can get health care providers to do a mini lecture and then we hang out. It would be a good place to start with some structure. I have someone in mind already-

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Hospital workers are striking next week so there will be a mini waiting period- but I’ll start networking this Friday.

By the way this would something for the future, I’m sure getting a speaker on short notice may not be feasible- but announcing a date of another meetup with a speaker would be nice-

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Nice @ferj… It will be good to have something of a template for organizing meetups.

I have proposed some organization improvements for the forum and having a good represenation on Meetup.com that I’d like to cross-reference: Zebra-striped rows; coloring ‘Meetup’ posts separately? (this posts and the ones below)

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Hello All! Either May 19 or 26 will work just fine for me, I would very much like to share with you a concept for structure as it relates to the individual and the collective in “group” meetings/settings. This concept is driven by collective wisdom based algorithms that are common to all of humanity. I believe it best if I wait until our meetup to share in detail my thoughts and hopes moving forward. I sincerely look forward to meeting you all in the very near future.

I will definitely be at the meet up on either one of those dates.

I think Idea 2 is the best approach for the first meeting. I told a few of my friends about both these ideas last night and they preferred Idea 2 for the initial meet up. They said it’d be nice to meet other people involved with humane tech in a casual setting before adding elements like speakers to these events. Plus, it would be difficult to book presenters on such short notice.

We should definitely consider hosting presentations in the future, though. Perhaps the brainstorming session at the first meeting could be about whether or not these events should have speakers.

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Attention everyone- we are having our meetup in Palo Alto at May 19 from 4-6pm. More information here

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