Meetups are happening at ApacheCon US 09 on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Meetup spaces will be available from 19:30, and we expect Meetups to start at 20:00. (This gives attendees time to grab a seat and settle down before your content starts!)

To request a slot, please contact planners-2009-us@apachecon.com with information about the target audience/community you're serving.

It's up to the community to arrange content for the Meetup, and although we'll provide what help we can with publicity etc, it's up to you to make sure that attendees know what's on and why they should care. You know your community better than we do, after all!

Details of the Meetups already scheduled are below.

Offsite meetups

The San Francisco Perl Mongers and the mod_perl folks will be meeting at Luka's for drinks and hacking: http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Perl-Mongers/calendar/11676532/

What is a Meetup?

A Meetup is defined as:

• Organized by the members of the project community itself
• Covering an Apache project (like Wicket, Cocoon, Jackrabbit, Portals, etc)
• Having an open agenda, for which anyone can propose a talk, covering a wide range of subjects
• Bring together a diverse crowd: committers, users and people merely interested in a specific project
• Free or 'real cheap' for attendees (depending on sponsoring)
  

Also, Meetups generally:

• Happen during evenings or in off-peak hours
• Are supposed to be fun
  

Things that worked out well in previous Meetups:

• Keep it short: short talks of about 15 to 30 minutes in length keep the audience's attention
  

Examples of successful Meetups

• ApacheConEU09 MeetUps http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/ApacheMeetupsEu09
• The Cocoon GetTogether 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
• Wicket Meetup 2007, Wicket Meetup 2008