Lightning Developer Week - Bangalore Salesforce Developer Meetup

#lightningdevweek

#golightningfast

#SalesforceDGBangalore

My goodness, what an amazing energetic week it was! This was as part of Salesforce's initiative to meet the power of Salesforce1 Lightning. Lots of buzz was created around this prior to the Lightning Week – week of March 9. This helped to spread the news in lightning speed! From the beginning I was keeping an eye open for number of RSVPs across all participating Meetup Groups. We, Bangalore Salesforce Developer Group, were always ahead. Finally we were the highest, with 500+ people registering (I am sure its a world record, in Salesforce world).

After lots of preparation and planning (which I have noted in the bottom of this post), the day (14/03/2015) arrived. We were given 200 (yes 200!) t-shirts from Salesforce. Thanks a ton to April, our pillar for all the meetups. I bet that was one of the key booster for the record number of RSVPs. Thanks to Tavant for the making the venue look awesome. We expected 50% attendance, as per our experience. To our pleasant surprise there were 300+ amazing rockstars attended :) As a surprise gift in return, along with Salesforce's Lightning t-shirt, attendees were given a kit which included 8GB pendrive by Tavant. It was definitely one of the key highlights. The remaining folks' email IDs and details were taken so that we can send the t-shirts when we get it.

First, I presented the welcome and introduction, which included about our meetup group, about agenda. Yes, I made sure that I announce about the highest number of participation and RSVPs. After that Tavant's Dipankar presented a brief about Tavant. Then I finally introduced and handed over to the presenters - Pratik and Kiran - Developer Advocate Engineer, India Developer Relations, Salesforce.com. They did a fantastic job in ensuring that each of the attendees followed the topics covered. Hats-off to both of you.

The covered topics were:

1. Lightning Overview
2. Lightning Connect - Hands on
3. Lightning Process Builder - Hands on
4. Lightning Components - Overview/demo
5. Lightning App Builder - Overview/demo

Feel free to click on the links above, which takes you to the tutorials. 

We agreed to keep the hands-on for Components and App Builder for our next meetup (April). Feel free to join our meetup group for exciting announcements.

Overall I am very happy and satisfied with results of the meetup. There were brilliant questions asked by the folks in between the presentation and during the hands-on. Bangalore crowd is always interactive and friendly. The folks grouped themselves to do the hands-on, since some of them did not have internet connection, which ensured the network/socialization was better. Great to know from the attendees that they enjoyed, as well as learned. Most attendees were able to do hands-on by themselves. It was great to see some rockstars finish the hands-on early and were able to help other folks. Kudos to you guys! In the end many of the attendees reached out to us with various questions regarding lightning, meetup agendas, sponsoring venues, etc. instead of attacking pizzas. Felt really good.

Some highlights according to me, presenters and attendees about this meetup:

• No. of RSVPs - 500+, No. of attendees - 300+
• Registration app for spot registration.
• Naming the event as 'Namma' (which means 'ours' in Kannada, local language Karnataka state)
• Hands-on is always interesting and is magnet for any tech event.
• The goodies - T-shirts, hoodies, pen drives.
• The Cloud Trivia - as always the most awaiting. The response was electric. I conducted it and asked more people to help me in identifying the first one amongst 50 (at least) hands raising at once soon after the question was asked.
• I had asked to vote for pizzas - Dominos or Pizza Hut. Majority had voted for Pizza Hut. We listened! [Salesforce Idea Exchange style :) ]. We brought more Pizza Hut pizzas and lesser number of Dominos pizza.

If you are organizing any meetup (especially if there are many attendees) following are some considerations:

• The basics: Ensure the venue has good internet connection (if not ask the attendees to arrange for internet), projectors, audio (microphones and speakers) are all working fine. Best if there are enough plug points for charging.
• Joining/registering for meetup:
• Registering (clicking on RSVP) for meetup is very easy. Folks tend to click on this and forget to update if they are not able to make it on the day.
• One of the feedback (thanks Sumeet Kawali), as well as from my experience, it is best that you create a registration app or a Google Form to capture more information. Most meetup groups(other than Salesforce) are using Google Form.
• Watch-out my blog - I am working on a small Salesforce app for this.
• Cloud Trivia: Prepare these questions in advance. Modify it according to the topics presented (there can be changes in plan). Have more than one person to identify the first person to raise the hand.
• Distribution of goodies/welcome kit: Always have volunteers do this. Don't allow attendees to pick for themselves. This is best done along with the registration.
• Snacks break: Again, best if the caterers or volunteers do this. If you let attendees help themselves, if the plan was for specific number of bottles/pieces then some last comers would miss. Encourage new people to socialize; request known faces to pull some shy members and talk to them.

We have noted some of the areas where, as organizers could have done better job, especially considering no. of people. We wont (& don't) repeat our mistakes!

I would be very glad if you can share your thoughts in the comments section.

See you in next meetup :)

Note: Photos coming soon..