Sponsorships - Where do we meet and what do we eat?

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Sponsorships - Who pays for the venue and the food?

Share you best tips here. This is a living document meant to be added to by user group leaders to spread knowledge, so go ahead and add your ideas here.

Location. location, location

This is the most important item to secure for your group. When the group is just getting off the ground, you may want to start by meeting at the local pizzeria or perhaps a coffee house. In many cases, networking with developers interested in participating in a user group will lead to an offer of using their facility as a permanent meeting site.

• Space at universities, community centers, or offices (local tech companies or the employers of your members are often convenient)
• Where are other local tech group meetings being held? (i.e. in Silicon Valley, a tech law firm may provide space and refreshments to many local meetups. In return, they get to speak for a few minutes at the meetings to a relevant audience and gain potential clients.)
• National Instruments can help with meeting space providing: 1) there is an office near your location, and 2) there is space available. Contact the NI respresentitve in your area for futher assistance.
• NI Alliance Partners and Training facilities could also be a good resource. Often NI Alliance Partners are willing to host a user group meeting at their facilities in exchange for time to talk about their services with the group. This is a list of NI Alliance Partners (http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niaa.search_display). You can also contact your local NI Sales Representitive or office (http://www.ni.com/niglobal/) to see if there are any training facilities in the area that NI uses. Sometimes these training facilities are willing to host user groups in exchange for talking about their offerings or just because NI uses their facility so often.
  

Food

• When contacting a company about providing a venue, it's a good idea to discuss food and beverages. If they are able to provide the venue only, think about the food providers in the area that would benefit from direct advertising to LabVIEW developers. Hopefully there are several which you can then pitch the idea to them that you have a large audience with members in their area and that might entice them enough for them to cater your user group. Perhaps use a different vendor at each meeting, if possible.
• Contact your local NI Sales Representitive or office (http://www.ni.com/niglobal/) about sponsoring your user group meeting with food and beverages
  

Some Ideas on What You Can Offer Sponsers of Your LabVIEW User Group meeting

• Inviting them to do a pitch at your meeting
• Displaying their banners or flyers at your event
• Adding a link to their website on your community page
• Have your members write reviews on their place of business
• Agree to be interviewed by them for a company blog or newsletter
• See if you can run some event where you bring your sponsers and NI representatives together

Other

• Remember to give the host/provider 4-5 minutes at the onset of the meeting to introduce their company/organization to the attendees.This is a simple way of getting the venue/food/beverage provider to feel that they have gotten something out of the exchange. 

DISCLAIMER

• National Instruments is highly supportive of groups of developers getting together to discuss National Instruments and LabVIEW related technologies. There are various ways that NI Corporate and local NI offices may be able to help a LUG, but a LUG should never be reliant on NI involvement. Your group should be self-sufficient and motivated by a pure love/interest in NI and LabVIEW technology. Experience tells us this is the recipe for long-lasting and successful user groups.