Our panel includes community managers from locations that put on hundreds of events a year, and an organizer whose community boasts 1000+ members. From finding speakers and sponsors, to doing the math on RSVPs, to maintaining momentum between events, we'll cover it all. 

Bring your questions to ask them too! 

Mark Scheel, Google Developer Groups Organizer: Mark is the organizer of Google Developer Group (GDG) Denver which he founded more than six years ago. He has organized more than 75 events for the local community. He has also flown around the world giving talks at other Meetups, from Paris to Hong Kong and from Silicon Valley to Montana. GDG is a unique organization with resources from one of the largest companies in the world. Because of this Mark has attended many community organizer summits around the world where he has had training from experts in the field, he has even met the CEO and founder of Meetup at one of the summits. A few years ago Mark started another Meetup group which struggled to get going but now has nearly 1000 members. Battling the challenges every Meetup organizer faces, finding venues and sponsors and speakers and more, without the resources of Google reminded Mark how you craft a community one smile and engagement at a time. 

Christine Bollow, BookBar Marketing & Events Manager: Christine received her BA in Theater from Barnard College, but more importantly, she won the award for "most books read" in 6th grade. Before finding her calling at BookBar, she has been a quality control editor for audiobooks, a Realtor, Pilates teacher, and a professional dancer and actor. As a Realtor, Christine won the 2017 Rising Star Real Estate Award (Portland Monthly Magazine) and was a Certified Negotiation Expert. Christine is proud to serve on the newly formed Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for MPIBA (Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association) and was a founding member of the Women’s Foundation of Oregon, when she lived in Portland before moving to Denver 2 years ago. She is very involved in the “Bookstagram” community through her account @readingismagical, which has nearly 14k followers, and is honored to have been recently featured as a #ladyboss on voyagedenver.com. 

Ani Harish, Workability Community Manager: Ani is from India and moved to the US on May 5, 2018. His career over the last 6-7 years has been about building communities around startups and entrepreneurs. He worked with 91 Springboard in India for 6 years before he moved. 91 Springboard is the largest co-working space in India and second in the world after We work in terms of the real estate space they have under management. He started off as a community manager in 2012 and built programs that help the entrepreneurial community in general. He has held multiple roles within the co-working Industry ranging from community, sales, operations, real estate acquisition, project, and program management.