Starting as a Leader
Think about what you want to get out of GEG
Yes, we're all passionate about technology, education, and perhaps changing the world. But what is the specific thing that YOU want to experience in GEG? What will GEG give to YOU? The answer to this question will guide you in how you should get involved with your local GEG.
Get Involved in a GEG
See if there is a GEG in your region here (if you want to create a GEG, check here )
Talk to the key people in the GEG that you'd like to join to find out how you might best add to their leadership team.
Talk about your ideas with your GEG co-leaders and let your energy flow! Be aware that you are joining an existing organism, spend some time listening and absorbing to see how you can add to the conversation.
After some time, you will be ready to throw your own events.
Join the GEG Leader Community
A great thing on GEG is that you don't just get inspired by the educator's community, but by our fellow GEG Leaders as well. Leaders communicate and collaborate even if they're not from the same GEG to exchange ideas, experiences, suggestions and resources.
Join the Global Community, and the one in your country (if you have one). These can be on Google Groups and/or other Social Media.
Take a look what other GEGs are doing in your city or country and follow their Groups to see what they're doing and get inspired.
Shoot a quick email to Mentors (GEG Leaders who specializes in certain areas of expertise) to intro yourself.
Comment on other people's posts in the Google Groups, offer your ideas, and share your experience.
Get ready to organizing events
Getting Started. Not sure where to start? To get the ball rolling and check out the Events Overview Guide or grab inspiration from the GEG Newsletter.
You can do events with limited technology experience. You are interested in technology but are really a beginner? No problem, you can organize a low tech event like a networking meet-up where people will share their experiences with certain technology. Or invite a speaker to talk about something you want to learn yourself as well.
You can do events with limited event management experience. The power of GEG is in the other Leaders - there'll usually be someone with whom you can team up to throw an event together and who might have experience that you don't quite yet have. Start small and slow, build your experience gradually, and within a few months you'll master the key aspects of event management.
You can do events with small groups of people. Some of the events you'll do later might be for large amount of people, but some of them might be just for a few people. As long as people are engaged and sharing you did well. Similarly, you can start by just running events for educators in your school network before expanding your GEG outside of your school network - that is OK too!
You don't have to be perfect. Yes. Really. We're more about the energy and interactions than about fancy events, star speakers and the latest hype. Your event can be very down to Earth and low key if you bring together a few people who come away feeling they have shared or learned something you can count that event as a success.
Stay active.
But you can also do much more in GEG than events!
You can help new leaders and GEGs get up to speed
You can get involved in non-event areas, such as marketing, design, fundraising, partnership building, blog writing, Google Groups maintenance, etc.
You can focus on specific types of events or invest your energy into one major event as opposed to a bunch of smaller events
Have fun!
None of these steps work unless you have fun, meaning that you really enjoy your GEG time and experience. If you don't enjoy it, just change something; GEG isn't a job, it even isn't a work. It's a something you do out of passion, for fun, and perhaps for the great feeling of doing something extraordinary.
