Welcome to another interesting post !!

To being with, I would like to share with fellow builders that I have been renewed for 6th time as an AWS community builder. Thanks to the community where I have learnt & learning a lot from community, utilizing the resources too. Absolutely grateful and as a give back, I do create content that makes more sense & useful to the community.

Main agenda for this post, is to share my experience of hosting a virtual meetup for AWS UG Women in Tech India group. Since the idea of bringing in Global talents to the group, I had lot of hurdles to get over which includes difficulties in sticking to a date & time, availability of speaker, hosting platform(s), poster creation, co-ordination, execution, technical glitches, setting the stage etc. Instead of narrating what/how/ things happened and how those situations were remediated, I felt that listing my learnings will be good help, to fellow AWS Builder or AWS UG Co-ordinator

Lessons learnt from hosting a virtual session for AWS UG:

1. Once decided, go ahead and host a session, whatsoever may come
2. Prepare a template or notes kind of information to share with Speaker right when you invite a person to be a speaker. Give in all the details that a speaker would want to know
3. Essential pointers are
4. AWS User Group
5. Registration source
6. Members anticipated to join vMembers currently in the group
7. Platform to host
8. Permissions needed to access those platforms(like Streamyard, Youtube)
9. Topic Categories or choices for a speaker
10. Duration of session
11. Demo included or not
12. Q & A required at the end of the session
13. Key Takeaways
14. Summarizing Session related details in Poster(with Canvas or any)
15. Co-ordination team(if hosted my more than one member
16. Social media write ups to publish in X, LinkedIn, Instagram
17. Take help from the community rather User Group for which the meetup is hosted
18. On D-Day, Join 15 minutes earlier, to sort out Audio/Video checks, screen share & others, if any
19. Now start hosting, as per the software used for hosting
20. Promote the session in social media much earlier with date & time with relevant hashtags
21. Embrace technical glitches during the session !! Yes, it is all part & parcel of any event
22. Post the session, publish a new post with Speaker handles, Session video sources(YouTube or any other podcast links), Github Links, Blogs or any resource that could of use to people and make it available to all, for reference
23. Live is challenging & hard at times !! Don't give up. Let's do it !!

I personally thank AWS WiT India Group lead co-ordinators who extended their time, support & knowledge and special shout out to my speaker(Yes, it is @rola Dali) who has stood with the commitment in spite of her busy schedule. Thankyou !!

Hope this helps & inspires people to host interesting AWS UG Sessions !!