Organising My First TeachMeet

And so #TMHavering is taking bookings! Fancy joining us? All the info is here: www.TMHavering.co.uk

But how did we get here?

As long ago as last summer, Andy Knill (@aknill) and I said to ourselves, there is NOTHING going on in Havering. Well there is, as there is lots of great schools with amazing teachers achieving fantastic things... but since most schools became academies as soon as they could, escaping Havering Borough control, very little has been going on centrally.

We looked at the success of #TMEssex and #TMLondon and agreed to put Havering firmly on the TeachMeet map with a well-planned, straightforward, high quality event. There are many teachers in the area who have not even heard of a TM and so we wanted to keep it simple, but make it good. Careful planning and consideration were important from the start.

We met twice at Bower Park to sort out the basics: date, time, location, format. We then set about getting the electronic infrastructure in place: email, Twitter, Facebook, website, buying URLs, logo, PBworks ad, presenter wiki, Eventbrite listing... There is far more to think about than just saying "Let's do a TeachMeet!". Also key to get Martin (@ICTMagic) onboard to be both technical wizard and chief camel thrower!

Having experienced excellent sessions at #TMLondon, #TMEssex and #TMEast, it was clear this careful planning was needed to ensure interest and create a legacy. Some suggested we should use one of the established names due to what Ross (@teachertoolkit) and Tom (@headguruteacher) had built. However both Andy and I want to do the same in Havering, hopefully by this time next year, #TMHavering will be equally recognised and established.

Luckily I'd read Ross' various posts and collected a few others, collating on my site: http://tiny.cc/teachmeets (worth careful reading if you are thinking about organising). It's fun and exciting, but also hard work and needs an allocation of what is already precious time. We are only part way there and no doubt I'll be blogging again about this experience. If you have any tips or ideas, please do get in touch!

If you are anywhere close to Romford, we'd love to have you come along in February. We promise, we'll be trying out best to make it a really great evening: relevant, useful, varied - and fun!