UsergroupRequirements

Requirements

A usergroup should fullfill the following requirements to be listet at php.ug:

• The topic should be PHP. You can of course handle different topics in your group, but PHP should be a focus. Otherwise it would be a Javascript or Python Usergroup, wouldn't it?
• You should meet regularily. The Olympic games are also on a regular basis, but more than once a year would be more like the real McCoy. Whether you are meeting twice or 12 times a year or even more often doesn't matter. And if you feel like doing 6 meetings in the first half and none in the second one of a year thats up to you.
• You should meet face-to-face. Online meetups or Hangouts can be a great thing but it's different from beeing together physically. You will have the chance to chat with different people in a much closer manner than online.
• Meetings should be free to attend. That doesn't always work out. But please be so fair and tell everyone about it. Make it clear that people have to pay for attending. And make the amount reasonable and affordable.
• Meetings and information about it should be free and easily to find for new (and old) attendees. Organising meetups via a closed mailinglist and having people to sign up for a newsletter just to check whether thats what she is looking for is simply not fair. Have a freely accessible website that holds the next dates, topics and locations. If you provide an iCalendar-File we can show the next dates on the php.ug-Website for you. Oh, and not everyone is on Facebook ;-)

Usergroups rise and fall. Often they come with a charismatic leader and as soon as she goes the usergroup falls asleep. You know that, we know that. And that's not bad, it's just the way it goes. But as soon as you are looking for a usergroup in your new area you don't want to find old entries. Thats why we look after each usergroup on the map in an irregular interval. When we can't find any activity we will contact you (the leader) or the PHP-community to check whether there is still activity going on that simply isn't reflected on the homepage. When we don't get any feedback, we set the usergroup into hibernation on the map.

We are constantly monitoring the community and as soon as we hear about a usergroup that is not on the map we add it. But you can do so also. Simply got to the promotion page and add your groups informations. As soon as we verified it, you can see the new group on the map!