Web Standards Café kit

If you are interested in running a Web Standards Café then feel free to use the resources below. These are only suggestions to help you on your way as meetups should be run in a way that works best for you.

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Web standards Café’s have been running all over the world bringing together people passionate about the web and making it work for everyone. They’ve always been a great place for web professionals to share, learn and network while being local and free. Recently people have been asking what is involved in running a Web Standards Café so we thought we’d pull together this “Web Standards Café Kit” to give you some ideas of what they’re about if you want to run your own.

If you have experience running or attending a Web Standards Café or Group then leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Who

Web Standards Café’s and meetups are run by web designers and developers for web designers and developers who are interested in web standards such as HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT etc. and best practices such as web accessibility and usability, internationalisation and the mobile web. Meetups are free and are independent of individual organisations, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or WaSP.

What

Groups organise meetups regularly in bars or Café’s to discuss pre-agreed topics, hear short presentations, network and hang out with a beer or two. Meetings generally include short presentations from volunteers followed by discussions and Q and A sessions. As far as the topics go pretty much anything is possible as long as standards are at the heart of it. Some topics that have been covered in meetups around the world include: HTML 5,search engine optimisation, accessibility, Flash and so on.

Where

Generally meetups are held in bars, Cafés and pubs. If you plan to hold presentations you’ll need a venue where you can set up a projector and screen (which you will need to provide for yourself if the venue doesn’t have one) so you may want a private room. If you are not holding presentations then a quiet corner somewhere that can fit you all should be fine. It’s always worth checking with then venue first that they are happy for a large party to meet if there are going to be a lot of you. Some meetups can be huge so may hold presentations in a lecture hall at at a university.

When

Meetups happen as often as they need too. Some groups meet on a monthly basis and others are more ad hoc. It really depends on interest and momentum in the place where the group is being run.

Sponsorship

While groups and meetups are independent and not affiliated to organisations it is possible to have sponsors. Often meetups are sponsored by companies in the form of donating food and drinks, a venue, equipment to podcast and transcribe presentations and so on. Ideally a meetup wont have just one sponsor but multiple sponsors or sponsors on rotation for a regular meetup. This is so that meetups remain grass roots and retain their independent status.

Promotion

You’ll know best how to promote the meetups in your country. You can also look at the section below that lists groups and meetups around the world to see what they do to organise themselves. Popular ways include setting up a website or webpage, mailing lists (using Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups or something that is well known in your country), publicising meetings on UpComing, EventWax, Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

There will be a Media Pack available for download on the ILG BaseCamp which will have some selection of documents to help you get some of the common tasks out of the way as easily as possible which will include.

A sample press release for sending to local media
A sample sponsorship request letter (with emphasis towards obtaining a good venue)
A sample slideshow for use at the event and conferences
A collection of logos (ILG and Wasp)
Some sample Avery labels for name badges

The files are not designed to be exhaustive. if you create new assets which you feel would be valuable to the group please upload them.

After the event

Keeping within the spirit of the meetup, it would be great if you could share as much information as possible with the wider community. This can be done through blogging, and the uploading images, slides, audio and video. If you make any podcast or video presentations it’s always good to include a transcription if you can.

When possible encourage attendees to upload content to public places with such as flickr with pre-defined tags.

Sharing Content

In order to allow the wider team to collate information easily for promotion and distribution we ask that resources are uploaded to common online services.

Flickr
Dotsub (video and crowdsourced captioning)
Dropbox
Slideshare

Finally

If you run a group or have participated in a group in your country and have some tips or advice or thoughts, leave us a comment, we’d love to hear from you. We’d also love to hear from anyone who is setting up Web Standards Cafés in places where they haven’t appeared before. If you have any specific challenges or insights we’d love to hear more about it.

If you have experience running or attending a Web Standards Café or Group then leave a comment and share any tips or ideas you have.

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The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

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