Community Advocacy Strategy: Small, Recurring Co-Working Gathering to Improve Engagement/Sustainability

From my research, Union AI/Flyte has built strong visibility through conferences and large events, which is great for awareness. However, there may be a noticeable gap in post-event engagement and long-term conversion.

This issue proposes a shift (or addition) to the events/ advocacy strategy by building smaller, recurring, community-led co-working gathering that prioritize connection, contribution, and retention within the Flyte open source ecosystem.

### Problem

While events bring people in:

- Engagement often drops after the event
- Attendees don’t always build a lasting connection to Flyte
- Conversion to contributors or long-term users is relatively low
- Flyte may not remain top-of-mind after initial exposure

In short:

We are reaching people, but may not consistently retaining or activating them within the community/ open source in general.

#### Proposal: Community Co-Working Gathering (Working Name)

Introduce small, recurring, community-led gatherings with focus on; Collaboration over presentation, Participation over passive attendance, Building real familiarity with Flyte.

These are intentionally not “meetups” in the traditional sense (deliberately not using the word meetup/event 😄) because one of the goal is not having a swag-driven attendance but towards consistent, human-centered engagement with the project.

### What Makes This Different
- Minimal or no formal talks
- Hands-on, collaborative sessions
- Focused on contributing, learning, and building together
- Lower pressure, more welcoming for first-time contributors/users

### Think:

A co-working space where people actively engage with Flyte together!

### Structure
- Organized locally by Community Representatives (Reps)
- Held across multiple global locations
- Occurs 4–6 (up to 8) times yearly per location
- Creates a consistent monthly/bi-monthly rhythm of engagement across the community

### Role of Community Representatives
Community reps would:

- Organize and host sessions locally.
- Support onboarding for new contributors/users
- Guide participants through using and contributing to Flyte
- Act as a bridge between the Flyte team and the broader community

### This also creates:
Ownership opportunities, Recognition pathways for active contributors (after creating a clear contributor pathway), A more sustainable and distributed community model.

### Suggested Session Activities (Pls add suggestions)
These should be low-barrier and engaging (not high-pressure like hackathons):

- Build small projects with Flyte and demo / build with Flyte
- Work on open issues in the Flyte GitHub repo
- Pair up to make first contributions
- “How to contribute to Flyte” walkthroughs
- Open discussions, troubleshooting, and co-learning

### Vibe:
Collaborative, relaxed, and welcoming—not intimidating or overly structured.

### How Union / Flyte Can Support

To make this sustainable, Flyte/Union can support in lightweight but impactful ways:

1. Financial Support (Capped)
- Up to $1000/year (note, for the "up to 8 on-site sessions) per community gathering.
Covering:
- [ ] Co-working space bookings
- [ ] Light refreshments/snacks

## Long-term goal:

- Encourage reps to identify free or community-supported spaces to reduce dependency on funding.
- Merchandising (Optional, Not Core).
- Provide limited, one-off merchandise
- Not swag-heavy—just enough to:
- [ ] Create identity
- [ ] Recognize participation
- Amplification
- Promote sessions and outcomes on:
- [ ] Flyte/Union social media
- [ ] Community channels

### Next Steps / Open Questions
Naming: What should we call these gathering? (“Co-working gathering” is a placeholder)
- How do we identify and onboard Community Representatives?
- What lightweight structure or toolkit do reps need to get started?
- How do we track success? (contributors, PRs, retention, etc.)

### Closing
Thoughts? - This isn’t about replacing conferences, it’s about strengthening what happens after.

When people discover Flyte, this gives them a place to land, engage, and grow within the open source community.

Start by reviewing the proposed gathering structure, Community Representative role, support budget, activities, and success metrics in this issue. Resolve the open questions about naming, representative onboarding, starter resources, funding, and measurement with maintainers and community representatives. Done means an agreed, actionable community program plan.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.