Articulate User Groups: Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices.

Thanks for creating this! I would love to start a Chicago user group. Let me know if anyone has interest. I have started a couple of user groups before. A few things I realized from my previous experiences:

1. Enjoy yourself. It can be a lot of work but enjoy yourself.
2. It is a lot of work! But it is constant learning and you meet a lot more of the community.
3. There are lots of places that are happy to provide free space for user groups to meet. Call around. 
4. Depending on how often you want a user group to meet, plan a number of meetings out before having your first meeting. This includes having networking, presentations, food, challenges, discussions, panels, whatever it might be, ready to go.
5. Don't do it alone. The point of a group is to be a group and if there are people you can find that want to help, then by all means! Often you meet more people who want to play apart in the first number of meetings.
6. Come up with ways to involve people. User groups sometimes get caught in hour long presentations. Mix it up with these, networking, local talent showcases, challenges like the ELH Challenge (https://community.articulate.com/hubs/e-learning-challenges).
7. Freebies (yeah... they can bring people in and they are fun). I am not sure if Articulate has a program for this, sometimes they do. Does anyone know? If not, sometimes you can find other local companies dealing with eLearning who can invest some money for food, give-aways, etc.
8. Have a website. A clear place for your group to look up info, see notes and wrap-ups, etc. Does Articulate have community sites for user groups?
9. Enjoy yourself.

I am probably missing a bunch but that was off the top of my head.