Fantastic question & I’m looking forward to learning other answers coming below here also!

Most recent I’ve attended EuroStar, 3QA, Tricentis trialled user group & RoboCorp meetups but enjoy going to all! :cD Not quite the same, but I’ve also helped run internally CoPs, CoEs where some expectations seem similar (at least to me).

• Knowledge sharing - as much as possible just incase participants are shy of, or fear networking. Can be more efficient ways to do things, testing techniques or tools etc.
• Puzzles & games & food - making the atmosphere relaxed & welcoming, getting strangers/people to collaborate together, free prizes
• Booths - new companies and product offerings can be learnt about, plus perhaps more importantly… free gift pickups!
• Plenty of breaks - to ask questions, write more notes or discuss on knowledge sharings, perform networking, also with an suggestion box for future ideas from participants
• For company ones: some roadmap info, info of products or trials being done behind the scenes which aren’t on the website & might make it into the final product
• For company ones: demos and where-best-to-use tips of the most recent software releases/products 

As a not-so-regular meetup attendee and fairly regular meetup speaker, here’s my $0,02:

• Food and drinks - since most meetups run after work, make sure there’s some bites and drinks available. If people are left hungry, they’ll leave. Yes, it’s an expense, but that’s typically taken care of by a sponsor.
• Content - the typical meetup has two talks, with some time for chatting and networking before and after, and a short break in between. This means there’s about 45-60 minutes left per talk. Increasingly often, I’m doing short workshops instead of a talk at a meetup. This actually works really well, because it’s much more active than just sitting and listening. People will sign up for workshop meetups a bit faster compared to just talks (hey, free live training!). Downside as an organizer: there’s probably fewer people who want to and can run a workshop compared to people willing and able to do a talk.
• I love @alex_read ‘s idea about some games for the time before the first talk but I think it’s better suited for a full day conference rather than a 2-3 hour meetup. Same applies to the sponsor booths.
• After COVID, a lot of people seem to like getting together again (at least they do over here), but some people are more hesitant, so that might reflect in your attendee numbers. I’m a member of the program committee for a couple of conferences and we definitely saw it take some time and effort to make sure attendee numbers are back to pre-COVID levels.

Hope that helps!

Thank you both to your inputs, I much appreciate them It gave me the inspiration that I could modify some of the talks into gamified hands-on workshops even though that one might be harder to pull out. But I totally agree with the idea that free live training is probably much more popular than just a talk.

@basdijkstra if you don’t mind me asking, what way do you usually apply for a talk? Through contacts or some call for papers form? Just curious as I would like find the best way to attract speakers.

And if anyone from the community would want to throw in his $0.02, I would welcome it. This can make all the meetups potentially better if we share our experience and ideas. :)

For most local meetups (and even for the 1-2 I’ve done abroad) it’s mostly all word of mouth, i.e., personally getting invited by the organizers.

I’ve not really seen meetups running a call for papers other than a statement like ‘if you’d like to speak at any of our meetups please send an email to so-and-so’.

For full-day and multiple-day conferences, there’s (of course) often a call for papers, but I don’t think that’s what you meant?

I have noticed that some communities do them for the virtual meetups, but for the in-person one, it makes a 100% sense to invite a speaker directly. Thank you for sharing your experience. :)

From the several meetups I’ve been to I came to the following conclusion: people don’t care that much about the talks, they care about talking with each other, getting a couple a drinks and having a good time altogether. One of the meetups had a short pub-quizz on pop culture and it was a blast. 

@mmario.ffrohlich that’s an interesting idea. Might be able to put together a pub quiz with questions that would be software development / software testing related Thanks for giving me the inspiration!