# The Common Lisp meeting kit

Everything you need to run a Common Lisp meeting, in a room or online:
a user group's monthly evening, a hack night, a reading group, a one-off
gathering at a conference. It comes from
[common-lisp.net](https://common-lisp.net/meetings/), where you can
also post your meeting on the community's calendar.

Nothing here is required. Take what helps, change what does not fit
your group, and throw the rest away.

## What is in it

| File | What it is for |
| --- | --- |
| `1-checklist.md` | What to do four weeks before, the week before, on the day, and after. Start here. |
| `2-agenda.md` | A standard two-hour agenda, with timings, and variants for a hack night, a reading group and an online meeting. |
| `3-announcements.md` | Words to copy: the calendar post, a mailing list or forum post, a short social media post, the reminder, and the recap. |
| `4-code-of-conduct.md` | A short code of conduct to adopt as it is or adapt. Fill in who to contact. |
| `5-online-and-hybrid.md` | Running the meeting on meet.common-lisp.net or another video service, and hybrid meetings with people in the room and online. |
| `6-newcomers.md` | Getting a newcomer from nothing to a working REPL in ten minutes, and where to go next. |
| `exercises.lisp` | Ten small exercises for a hacking session, from first steps to a macro, each with its tests. Load it in any Common Lisp and call `(ex:check)`. |
| `exercises-solutions.lisp` | One answer to each, for after people have tried. |
| `welcome-slides.html` | The opening slides: welcome, the code of conduct, the evening's plan, how to get set up. Open it in a browser; edit it in any text editor. |
| `printables.html` | A sign-in sheet, a lightning-talk sign-up sheet and a door sign. Open it in a browser and print it. |
| `lisp-logo.png` | The Lisp logo the slides and the printables use. |
| `LICENSE` | The terms: CC BY 4.0. |

## The shape of a good meeting

Most Lisp meetings that last have the same few things in common:

- **A regular time.** The same evening of every month (the second
  Tuesday, say) is easier to remember than a new date each time, and
  people plan around it.
- **Something to look at, but not too much.** One talk, or a few
  lightning talks, then time to talk and to hack. People come for the
  conversation as much as for the talk.
- **A welcome for the newcomer.** Someone who has never written Lisp
  should leave with a working REPL and a reason to come back. Name
  one person each time whose job is to look after newcomers.
- **A record.** A short recap afterwards, with links to the slides
  and the code, shows the meeting is alive to the people who could
  not come, and brings some of them next time.

## Put it on the calendar

Post your meeting at <https://common-lisp.net/meetings/>. It goes up
at once, and you are given an address where you can take it down. The
calendar has an iCalendar feed that people can subscribe to, so a
meeting posted there reaches people who never look at the page.

A meeting that repeats (every month, every week) is posted once.

## Licence

The words of this kit are under the
[Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
as is the content of common-lisp.net: use them, change them, share
them, and say where they came from. `exercises.lisp` may also be used
under the same terms as any code you write with it. The Lisp logo is
in the public domain.

Improvements are welcome: the kit's home is
[clm/meeting-kit](https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/clm/meeting-kit) on
gitlab.common-lisp.net, where merge requests and issues go.
common-lisp.net carries a copy of it in
[its own repository](https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/clo/cl-site), under
`content/meeting-kit/`, and serves the download from there.