Making an eu/acc meetup most useful
Published:
This is my thinking about how to make the eu/acc meetup in Cologne most useful. It’s intended to be concise & actionable; and not marketing speak. For an intro to eu/acc see https://eu-acc.com/.
I’m organizing a meetup for eu/acc. How can I make it most useful?
What is eu/acc
eu/acc is a decentralized movement to accelerate innovation in Europe. This is needed, because Europe has world-class talent & research, but is failing to produce world-class companies.
eu/acc believes the root cause for this is not culture or regulation, but fragmentation. Fragmentation creates friction, friction reduces speed, less speed takes away energy.
eu/acc aims to work on ambitious, but specific & implementable projects to address fragmentation. The current projects are:
- European startup legal entity
- blueprint for European holding company (as long as there’s no European startup legal entity)
How can the meetup be valuable to the eu/acc movement?
- verify understanding of problem
- what’s the experience of European founders?
- what were their pain points?
- how do they differ from pain points of eg American founders?
- get new project ideas
- get talented & energetic people into existing projects
- become more widely known
How can the meetup be valuable to the participants?
Participants can
- meet amazing people
- learn from other European founders
- get involved into projects they believe are impactful
- have fun
Participants are likely very smart & high energy. Don’t try to ‘tame’ them. If the group discussion goes into an unexpected direction, that’s totally okay.
So how should the agenda look like?
Agenda:
- Arrival
- 15min
- Intro of host, establish ‘meetup culture’
- event is respectful, english-friendly, without partisan politics
- okay to ask questions any time
- 5min
- Fast Intro round
- Who are you?
- What do you do professionally?
- Why did you join today? What are your expectations?
- 10-20min
- Presentation of eu/acc & (optionally) overview of projects
- Allow for discussion during presentation
- 10-30min, depending on discussion
- Free mingling so participants can talk about presentation
- 30min
- Collect output in group discussion
- Did you agree, disagree with eu/acc’s thesis & projects
- What else do you want to share with group
- Do you want to get involved somehow?
- In an existing project
- In a new initiative
- How can we support you best?
- 30-60min
- Social mingling
- open-ended
Total time: 2-3h plus open-ended social mingling
After the meetup:
- Post summary to eu/acc discord
- Mail summary to attendees & keep their energy high (to make it more likely plans are followed through)
Okay, let’s do this!
- Umer