MeteorCamp welcomes Arunoda to NYC!

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Hi Meteorites!

We are thrilled to welcome Arunoda Susiripala to our first annual Meteor Camp happening here in NYC at the UN on July 8-10! It’s only a month away but please come join us as we host a technical open-source gathering for the Meteor community, by the Meteor community.

Meteor Camp is a not-for-profit, all-volunteer event and will feature Arunoda for keynote and panels along with presentations by Josh Owens, Abigail Watson, Robert Dickert and other members of the Meteor community. Their presentations will cover topics ranging from building HIPAA compliant applications to component design when using React to mobile application development to mission-based software development – all in the Meteor ecosystem.

What can you do? Here are 3 easy ways to prepare for the camp ahead and help us spread the word:

  1. Get your tickets now! Don’t miss out on getting available tickets! Let your Meteor/Node/JavaScript code buddies know too so they’re not left out.

  2. Follow and like. Follow us on our social media accounts and like our Facebook page.

Facebook: facebook.com/Meteor-Camp-NYC
Twitter: @MeteorCampNYC
Our official hashtag for Camp is: #MeteorCampNYC

  • Once you sign up, tweet: “I’m going to #MeteorCampNYC – join me there!! @MeteorCampNYC”

  • Post on LinkedIn and Facebook: “I’m joining Arunoda Susiripala, Abigail Watson, Josh Owens, and Robert Dickert at the United Nations for Meteor Camp NYC 2016, the free (suggested donations) MeteorJS gathering on July 8-10. Get your tickets while they last at http://meteorcamp.nyc #MeteorCampNYC"

  • Use the hashtag #MeteorCampNYC to find updates about the event and to let everyone know the cool things you are doing at Camp.

  1. Participate as a presenter. While the schedule is nearly complete, we have an opportunity for two or three key MDG/community contributors to sign on. Let us know your interest!

  2. Partner with us! In the commercial world, it’s called sponsorships. Join with Gold Partner OK Grow and Community Partner Checkmate Creations to help cover the cost of putting on this event to ensure we can make this an annual gathering. You can find our prospectus online at http://meteorcamp.nyc/etc/MeteorCamp2016Prospectusv.%201.3.pdf Reach out to Alim S. Gafar or Adrian Lanning to discuss.

  3. Arrange for your stay. Meteor Camp NYC is being held at the world headquarters of the United Nations in midtown Manhattan. Midtown has many options when it comes to accommodations. We will be posting the discount code and online booking link to our website shortly.

Some nearby and affordable lodging options include:

The New York Marriott East Side
The Pod 39 & 51 hotels
The Hampton Inn Manhattan/United Nations
The Vanderbilt YMCA

Excellent affordable options are also often available on Airbnb and Booking.com.

Less than 170 tickets remain. What are you waiting for? Go sign-up for your ticket.

We look forward to seeing you at Meteor Camp!!

Alim, Dakoda, Mirza, & Adrian
Meteor Camp NYC 2016 Team

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I am really excited to meet a bunch of great Meteor contributors in person and discuss about Meteor and related technologies.

My talk (apparently it’s the keynote) is titled as “How Meteor looks like in 2018”. I have a lot to predict and share :slight_smile:

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I take it there will be a YT channel as well?

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Congratulations on getting the visa, Arunoda! And welcome to NYC!

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I would love to participate but I can’t be in NYC at that time. Will there be a streaming option so I can “attend” virtually?

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Another vote for streaming! Kudos to @arunoda, @joshowens, @awatson1978, @rdickert and the other presenters – really looking forward to it!

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Thanks :slight_smile:
A lot of people at NY Meteor Group and Open Camp helped me.

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Ethan,

We will try. For now, we’re just trying to finish the lineup and get live attendees to make it successful. And partners (“sponsors”) — if you know anyone who might be interested, send them our way; we still need the support and love!

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We’ll see what we can do. Since it’s less than three weeks away, Adrian or I will probably post updates again. So as we get closer, and if we can do it, we’ll let you know. Fair?

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Definitely! It’s always kind of cool to see things live, but either way I’m sure the content will be solid.

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The UN will record the sessions. In earlier discussions with MDG, we offered to share the videos for the YouTube channel. Unfortunately, we have not had any further discussions recently.

That said, the Meteor NY meetup group has its own YT channel, and if need be, we’ll post them there. We’re really excited to do this for the community — it’s totally not-for-profit and we’re trying to make it accessible for as many people as possible.

We’re thrilled Arunoda agreed to fly halfway around the globe to attend. We’re looking forward to terrific talks, passionate discussions, and informed insights.

Please share the news with anyone you think who might be able to attend. Tickets are free, but if you can make a donation, it will help cover the costs. We’re providing refreshments all day as well as lunch and we’re trying to see about arranging an overnight hackathon. We know we can have one; we’re just a bit strapped for bandwidth to put one together.

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I totally understand. Thanks for the update. I posted about the event in the Meteor Austin Meetup group to try and spread awareness and see if anyone else from Austin was planning to attend.

Cheers!

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Thanks, Ethan!

Last Friday, I sent out a mailing to each of the Meetup groups. However, I don’t think they went through; I’m a member of many of them so I would have received it. It leads me to believe many of the Meetups have moderated lists.

I’ll be honest — we really need help getting the news out to the other groups. Do you have any suggestions? This is the first time we’ve done something so big that could benefit so many.

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I think you’re correct about the moderation. I do see that my post went through but it doesn’t look like it’s getting a whole lot of attention.

I know it’s tough raising awareness. Nevertheless, I suppose that the fact that you’ve managed to reach me (some random dude in Austin, Texas) indicates that you have actually managed to get the news about this event out, so some success there. That being said, there are 3 things that come to mind about promoting this event:

  1. Awareness and interest can take a long time to build up - I’m not sure how long y’all have been promoting this but I only recently became aware of the event and I see that it is coming up relatively soon. It may be a good idea to allow greater lead time. Booking hotel and flight to NYC is not trivial for most folks, I think. So, adequate time to plan such a trip would likely increase the number of attendees;

  2. Offer a streaming alternative - While this event is in its infancy, offering a streaming alternative for a moderate price would almost certainly pick up some participants who otherwise will not/cannot attend in person (because of travel, cost, time commitment, uncertainty about the quality/brand of a new event, etc.).

This to me is clearly the lowest hanging fruit. There’s less overhead for you all as organizers and a lower barrier of entry for people who are curious but wanting a lower commitment.

  1. Variety of promotional venues - People access information in a variety of ways, of course, and it helps to reinforce something when people are exposed to it through different channels: these forums, crater.io, meetup.com, facebook, twitter, youtube, hacker news, reddit, ads on stackoverflow, google, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc.

Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a company selling some sort of reasonably priced comprehensive media package that you could buy to get that kind of spread and bake the cost into the price of admission. Something like that.

Anyhow, just a few thoughts. Hope this helps get the creative juices flowing. Cheers.

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You might want to look at clicktotweet and thunderclap.it as ways to promote the event.

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Thank you for the thoughtful input, Ethan.

Until a couple of weeks ago, we weren’t so sure we could pull it off. Now we’re certain Meteor Camp will happen.

Next year will be quite different. Our goal right now isn’t to try to convince people to change their plans or make expensive last-minute trips to New York. Rather, it to inform the community that this is happening soon. Those who are able to attend (work in the area, live there, can take a long drive there, will co-incidentally be there) are welcome to do so. Given the size of the east coast population, we think our modest goal of about 200-250 attendees should work.

(The TICKETS ARE FREE; we suggest a donation amount to help cover the cost. We provide refreshments and a box lunch each day to all attendees.)

We want share news about this for everyone in the worldwide community, not so much for this year, but so folks can plan for next year’s event. This is for all of us, but as you point out, lead time and distance this year make it less so.

  1. Awareness. You’re spot on with awareness. We pulled this together in a short period of time with very few people focusing first on speakers – we started in March. We did this primarily by reaching out to those who we knew or had experience with in speaking. A good amount of time was spent working on helping get Arunoda here.

We were reluctant to reach out widely about the event without securing presenters and partners. That might have been a mistake, but given the hours in the day, and the bodies on it (early on it was barely Adrian and me), we chose to spend our limited time there. And we still had to organize our three monthly Meteor meetups, so time is extremely limited.

So our goal is, it would be great to have community members post a notice to their blogs, twitter feeds, colleagues. Anything to let people know about Meteor Camp. If they can make it, we’d welcome them. And if they can’t, they’ll know the event videos will be forthcoming.

  1. Streaming. We want to do this. We’ll have to work with the UN. I have no idea if they will let us use their equipment; or if signals will get through from Periscope or YouTube or FB or Blue Jeans; or if it is allowed under their security protocol. But we’ll look into it, and if we can, we will.

  2. Promotional venues. This gets back to my point in (1). We’ve started on FB, Meetup (all the Meteor ones, NYTM [50K members], some product, database, data, and Node-related ones), LinkedIn, Twitter, and these forums. We plan to post to HN and Reddit. Did I mention that this is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit event? And we’re admitting people for free and hoping they’ll donate something? This year, there is no budget for advertising; as a matter of fact, we’ll likely owe the UN for space, security and food. However, it’s good that you raised it, and if we’re able to get some money this year, we’ll recruit someone experienced who can help us put together a decent campaign for next year. Right now, it’s not in the cards.

We’re still a small team, trying to get the word out that Meteor matters, and that people are gathering this summer at Meteor Camp NYC 2016 to prove it. I think we’ve done a lot so far to get here, but we can’t do it all alone. We need you all to help share the news: “Meteor Camp NYC 2016 is coming to the UN this July 8-10. Get your tickets now.”

Alim, Alex, Dakoda, Mirza & Adrian

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Wow! That is outstanding. I always have much respect and admiration for community builders. I certainly appreciate the initiative you all have taken so far and I will continue to do what I can to help spread the word. I wish I could be there but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for updates about videos and/or streaming.

I’ll continue to post back with any feedback about what kind of interest I hear expressed from others.

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Quick update,

We’re working with the Open Camp team and the United Nations to live stream Arunoda’s Keynote address. That is scheduled to start at 11:00 AM EST. Please check the schedule as we get closer to July 9th for any last minute changes at http://meteorcamp.nyc .

The rest of the event will be available on video shortly after Camp is over.

Regards,

Alim S. Gafar
Co-Chair, Meteor Camp NYC 2016

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Flying in a day early - since I’m from the other side of the globe. So let me know if anyone else has time to kill.

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I’ll be there. And all hail Arunoda!