Event MVP: Minimum “requirements” for organizing a community event

This is something I worked on during the PyCon US 2025 Sprints. It's part of a more comprehensive guide, but I wanted to share it somewhere in the meantime. It will also be translated into Spanish later.

Good news! There are no hard requirements or one "correct" way to organize an event. But planning ahead can improve your event and your experience as an organizer. 

In-person events help build community. There are many types of events you can organize, and they don’t need to be complicated or “perfect” to be effective. 

You don’t need a lot of people for an event to be a success, usually communities and events start little and they grow organically. 

Some examples of events are:

• Community Meetups: Casual gatherings for networking, sharing updates, and brainstorming.
• Talk Nights / Lightning Talks: Community members share knowledge in short talks (5–20 min).
• Coffee Chats / Open Hours: Regular informal virtual/in-person hangouts.
• Workshops: Hands-on sessions (e.g., intro to Git, testing frameworks, contributing to OSS).
• Study Groups: Regular meetups to learn a tool, framework, or language together.
• Coworking sessions: Meet in a local coffee store or somewhere similar to work.

Organizing an event isn’t necessarily complicated, but it can take time—so having a checklist is helpful, especially to divide tasks.

✅ Example Checklist for an In-Person Meetup with Talks

• Set the date and time (Find the day of the week that works best for your community).
• Find a venue — local tech companies or universities can sometimes host the event.
• Call for talks — ask in tech groups, via DM, etc.
• Be persistent — follow up and reconfirm talks, workshops, or other activities.
• Create the event on meetup.com; you can duplicate a previous event.
• Make a flyer (you can reuse designs from past events or use canva.com):
  • Logo
  • Date
  • Time
  • Venue
  • Talks, workshops, activities
  • Meetup event link
• Post on social media (include both the flyer and event details).
• Share the event in other IT groups or communities.
• Send reminders of the event in your group every few days — especially the day before and the day of the event.

Template for Twitter/Telegram/Discord/etc

For different types of events, the checklist will probably be different. A good idea is to review the checklist after your event, and if there were any lessons learned or things to improve for next time, update it accordingly.

✨ Additional Tips for Organizing Events

• Start simple and keep costs—both time and money—low. For example, coffee and food can enhance the experience, but they’re not essential. Don’t include them in your events unless the costs are easily covered, such as through a sponsor.
• Celebrate small wins. Thank volunteers and speakers, and highlight what went well. It encourages more people to get involved next time.
• Keep a list of venues where you've hosted events, along with the contact person. This can be useful for planning future events or if someone else needs to organize the next one.
• Take pictures! Keeping memories is great and you can use the pictures to promote future events. Just make sure you have permission from the people in the photos before sharing them publicly.
• Invite attendees to give a talk at the next event or to help organize it.
• Ask for feedback on what you could improve for the next event.
• Start and end with community. Give time before/after the event for people to talk. Community often grows in the gaps between the scheduled activities.
• Document everything. Create shared folders or documents for checklists, templates, budgets, flyers, etc. It'll save you and others tons of time when organizing future events.

Do you have any tips or suggestions to add to this guide? Please leave a comment 🙌