"Rostov IT-community" or 5 steps to create a party in your city

Friday night is a great time to go to some interesting event. But what to do if you do not live in Moscow or St. Petersburg, where often there are parties for geeks, developers and IT managers in general?
There is no active community in your city, there are no places where programmers gather, there is no culture of business acquaintances at events among IT specialists, and people do not understand the difference between the word “mitap” and “startup”. We start a tractor and
Do you really want to somehow change the situation? We managed to do it, under the cut experience and source code.

Hello everyone, my name is Trofim Zugastrov and it happened that I have been doing “Rostov IT-community” for a little over a year. The photo above shows our first rally on July 27, 2013. After my posting on the blog, the infrastructure builders began to meet people who do the same in other cities. A certain general outline appeared in my head, according to which communities can be created where they are not yet. I will give here 5 simple steps in the style of Captain Obvious, to how to start brewing a party in your town.

1. Find a place.
It should be free (you do a non-commercial story).
It should be free to accommodate more than 50 people. We had 130 on JS mitap, the people didn’t fit and left :(
It should be in the heart of the city.
There should be a projector, wi-fi, sockets, audio equipment (microphone and speakers).
There should be a cozy (ideally loft space).
There you can drink beer. Otherwise why all this ??!
')
2. Find thematic communities. Surely you already have a party of iOS developers, rubists or hardcore java-guys in the city. You need to create some kind of add-on to unite all these people. They will not fight, do not worry, they have more common interests than holivarny differences.

3. Find people in social networks. Create a group of VK and FB, you can even twitter, but here it is somehow not very popular. Invite all familiar programmers and all those who are in thematic public. Create an event page in social networks for each meeting and invite people from the main page. Do not let headhunters in the group.

4. Stay independent. We had corporate attempts to create communities in the city, but they all slipped into frenzy hunting. A delicate issue is sponsorship and donations. It is very important to understand the difference: when sponsoring a person pays money and receives something in return (advertising, PR, setting up a banner or stand, the possibility of email sending to participants, etc.), donations come free of charge, often anonymously, help preserve independence and the attraction of the party. I advise you to make a choice in favor of the second.

5. Find the heroes. They are everywhere. These are people known outside of your city. They need to be invited first. They have something to share and they are happy to do it (and some regularly). Be sure to listen to their opinion about what should be a party, without them it will be dull.

Previously, on the Habré there was a section of events, it was possible to cover our events there, now it was removed, and we wrote down our engine. You can rate it at work here .
Source codes , as it is necessary, on gitkhab .
Of course there is still a lot of work, but it can already be used as a basis for creating your own communities.

Thanks for attention!
To get to know our get-together, come to our South Fest beach conference. This is the resulting event of the year, which I summarize the result of my organizational activities. I will be glad to answer questions in the comments. Report errors in PM.