Starting a Transhumanity.net meetup or chapter is easy to do and simple.  To help you along we have created the following kit to smooth things out but feel free to ping us with questions if you need help or more information (Admin@transhumanity.net).  We broke out the steps to starting a chapter into the following steps:

1. People… the most important thing is to have friends, colleagues or other people in your community to help.  The core group or people willing to help can be your organizing committee or board of directors for your chapter.  Generally 3 to 5 people is the minimum but its up to you.  This group needs to work together as a team to-do things from marketing to getting speakers.

2. Place to Meet, this can be a room or the local library or frequently groups meet at a local business that like’s to be either associated with a user group for professional reasons or as a way of contributing to the community.

3. Decide on how you want your group to work?  Now that you have a group to run it and place to meet you really need to decide how the group is going to work.  Do you need Bylaws, will it be an NPO (non profit) or just an informal group?  Here is an example of bylaws you can use:

[http://transhumanity.net/example-transhumanity-net-meetup-group-by-laws/]

NOTE: to use the Transhumanity.net brand you need to agree to the legalee’s around it, basically be nice and obey laws and help others and your good.

4. Speakers… Now here is where the work starts.  Getting speakers can seem hard but with a little work its easy or at least gets easier.  You can start with the people you know.  Its a great way to for you and others to get experience presenting.  Another great way to get speakers is it to reach out to related companies or groups that are connected with the focus on your chapter interests.  Examples might be Google, Microsoft or the local university or hacker space. Groups like this generally have ‘evangelists’ whose job it is to help the community learn how to use their products and they are more then willing to get speakers for you and further generally provide great swag if its about topics they are ‘evangelizing’ say you want to learn about emerging mobile technology.

5. Scheduling your first event – the last real step is start having meetings.  Once you have a speaker and a location then you can schedule your events.  many groups have them reoccurring like every 3 wed or something like that but again its up to you.  Once you schedule the event make sure to get the word out, telling friends and others so people show up really is what starts to build excitement and make things fun.  So how do you do that?

Keep in mind that instead of speakers you can do things like say all watch the movie transcendence, go out for pizza and talk about what it could mean.  It is just that easy that is probably the best kind of community building.

6. Marketing 101 – to start with emailing everyone you know and having people post your events and or putting them on community calenders is a great place to start.  From setting up a web site to social media tools like facebook and twitter; these are all great ways to get the word out on your group and your meetings.  Transhumanity.net also will post stuff on their social media feeds and potentially a blog post for really great events.  Its really about driving awareness of your events.  With a little money there are other things you can do such as getting a domain name (url) to a full blown web site.  Some groups use paid programs like meetup to drive community awareness.  These are all great tools and its up to you what you do but the one important factor is to be consistent.

Some of the great tools out there include:

http://www.twitter.com/

http://www.facebook.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/

http://www.meetup.com/

Download the Logo and Media Kit:

http://transhumanity.net/PressKit/

7. Sponsors – Getting sponsors can really help you make your chapter exciting.  There are lots of companies out there willing to provide you with resources from books to speakers to money and most of it is straight forward to set up.

8. Non Profit Status: ok so you really want to be a non profit.  This is where you start to get serous.  NPO status means your essentially a real company.  It means tax’s and IRS or similar depending on the country your in but could really also mean having a bank account and more sponsors and money. If your really serous about NPO stuff there are a lot of service companies that can help like:

www.MyCorporation.com

9. Lastly as a Transhumanity.net meetup we can provide a chapter email and page just for your chapter on transhumanity.net.  Something like: transhumanity.net/Seattle etc.

Still need help?  Contact us for an invite to our Dial-in meeting’s and our internal mailing list.

you can always just email us and we will help you as best as we can.

Admin@transhumanity.net