Recruiting and Maintaining LUG Membership

[G-Money]

Recruiting - How to attract LabVIEW developers to your LabVIEW User Group

This is a living document intended to give and receive ideas, to share experiences and together we will learn what does and does not work. Share your best tips here.

How do you get the word out that you are trying to start a new user group? Try these suggestions.

• If you sre involved with other local user groups, send out an email to look for interest.
• Talk with work collegues who are LabVIEW developers
• List your group on sites like Meetup.com or LinkedIn.com

Use Twitter

There are millions of people talking about a millions of topics on Twitter. Some of those topics could pertain to your group, so look them up.

To name a few interesting hashtags:

• #labview
• #graphical
• #nationalinstruments
• #NI
• #DAQ

Then you can use the location based search http://search.twitter.com

Shameless Plugs

Find User Groups in your city that are interested in similar technical topics to LabVIEW (e.g. Automated Test, DAQ, Instrument Control).

Find them on http://groups.google.com , http://www.meetup.com/ , http://linkedin.com or FaceBook. Stop by their next meeting to say hello and see if you can give a plug for your group.

It is always common courtesy to talk with the group coordinator beforehand to make sure that this would be welcome.

Talk with your local NI Sales Rep!!!

Your local sales group is a great resource for driving membership, logistics of securing a meeting place or ordering food, as well as other support.

You can call your local NI Sales Rep to find out who in your area is listed as a LabVIEW contact. Use this website (http://www.ni.com/niglobal/) to search for a sales person/office in your area.

The local sales group should be able to help with a membership drive a couple of times a year by emailing all the LabVIEW contacts in the area to let them know about your user group meeting.

Give them a call!

Membership - now you've got some people interested in showing up and the meeting is running smoothly. How to get more people involved and keep retention high is the next step.

• Personal relationships
  • As the organizer, you're the center of attention. Everyone knows who you are, so you're the hub. Networking and basically making friends is part of your job. Getting to know your members on a personal level will make them feel like part of the group, and the more people you know, the more sponsorships, speakers, and help you'll be able to get.
  • Also help your members network with each other. Try icebreakers, polls, socials, etc. If people feel connected to each other, they're more likely to be involved and stick around.

• Delegating responsibility
  • The fastest way to get people invested is to ask them for help. This can be easier said than done, of course, but getting people involved in organizing the group is important. Not only does it keep you from burning out, but having a strong core group of members will make the group more sustainable.
  • Asking for help via email land in announcements is a good idea -- the really great people will step up and want to be a part of your core group.

• Online Community Presence
  • Have a healthy online community for your user group. This will make it easier for you to send out announcements to the entire group but also give you a place to continue discussions brought up during the meeting and get feedback on topics. Setup a community page on ni.com/community.

Oftentimes, the best bonding experiences happen outside of the meetings. Here are some other ideas:

• Host a larger event, either 24-hours or over a weekend where people have to work together in order to design and build an application together. Some real-world examples:
  • Campout with a real-world hardware coding challenge
  • Host an NI Days event

• Attend a conference as a group: If there is a conference nearby that is pertinent and several of your members are planning to attend, arrange to go as a group. NIWeek is in Austin, TX every August but some groups can't travel that far. If you do come to NIWeek as a group, try and set up a dinner or meetings with NI sales/marketing/R&D officials so everyone can network and have fun together.