Community Organizing Series Intro
This is the introduction to my community organizing series, a guide for those want to run amazing meetups, user groups, workshops, conferences, and communities (and not burn themselves out).
April 05, 2019
I’ve been wanting to to a blog series on community organizing as it always seems to come up in conversations when people learn about the work I’ve done in building Kansas City Women in Technology over the last 6+ years. Kansas City Women in Technology(KCWiT) is the non-profit organization I founded in 2013 to grow the number of women in technology careers in Kansas City. We run a number of programs and events including:
I hear a lot of community organizers experiencing some similar problems and I’d love to document KCWiT’s approach for others to learn from - and it’ll be helpful for me to have a documented guide to refer to when I mentor new organizers.
Running community organizations which tend to be volunteer-based requires a mind-shift to be able to run effective organizations while ensuring yourself and your volunteers don’t get burnt out.
This series will include topics on:
- How to build volunteer teams: April 9th,2019
- How to run a successful event
- How to maintain boundaries as an organizer
- How to lead a group of volunteers
- How to create a culture of improvement & innovation
- How to handle difficult situations
- How to manage sponsor, vendor, and venue relationships
If you’re looking to start a new meetup, take over running an existing group, start an Angular Girls/Django Girls/RailsBridge event, or even organize a conference, consider this series your guide!