drupalpune Venue outreach
A four-touch sequence for getting a room for the monthly meetup, plus the bookkeeping that makes the next cycle easier than this one.
The hard rule: draft, never send. Everything lands in Gmail drafts for review. No exceptions, no "this one is obviously fine". Community outreach dies the moment it reads as automated, and a bad draft caught at review costs nothing.
Workflow
1. Work out the date
python3 scripts/meetup_date.py --next 2
Never type a meetup date by hand. Hardcoded dates are the thing that breaks in month four.
2. Find the row
Live pipeline is data/venues.csv (gitignored). If it doesn't exist, say so and
offer to copy data/venues.sample.csv. If the org isn't in the file, add a row
rather than drafting off the cuff — an untracked mail is a mail you will send
twice.
Read from the row: org_name, contact_name, contact_role, contact_email,
org_type, crossover_angle, source, stage, last_contacted,
hosted_before, notes.
Ask the user for anything missing rather than inventing it. Never invent a contact name, email, or a prior interaction.
3. Pick the touch
Current stage |
Touch | File |
|---|---|---|
not_contacted |
1 — first contact | assets/touch-1-first-contact.md |
contacted, 5+ working days silent |
2 — follow-up | assets/touch-2-followup.md |
followed_up, still silent |
3 — breakup | assets/touch-3-breakup.md |
| said yes | 4 — confirmation | assets/touch-4-confirmation.md |
warm (soft no earlier) |
1 again, next cycle | touch 1 with the re-ask opening |
declined, not_a_fit |
none | Do not mail. Say why. |
If they replied with anything substantive, none of these templates apply. Answer what they actually asked, and use the templates only for structure.
Sanity-check against last_contacted before drafting. If it's under five
working days, say so and ask before drafting a chase.
4. Fill it in
- Standing facts (agenda, what the host provides, what they get) come from
references/meetup-facts.md. Reference it; don't fork the text into the draft. - The crossover paragraph comes from
references/crossover-angles.md, keyed oncrossover_angle, falling back toorg_type. Rewrite it in the org's own terms — their stack, their product. A paragraph that would suit any of sixty orgs is a paragraph that reads as a merge. - The track-record line is counted from
data/meetups.csvat draft time. - Leave a token as a visible
{{token}}if you genuinely can't fill it, and flag it above the draft. Never guess and never quietly drop it.
5. Create the draft
Use the Gmail connector's create draft tool. To contact_email, subject and
body from the template.
- Plain text. No HTML, no tracking pixels, no images.
- Sender identity comes from
chapter.yml. - If Gmail isn't connected, write the draft to
out/as a markdown file and say that's what you did.
Then show the user the full body in the conversation. They review before it goes.
6. Update the pipeline
Every draft updates the row — otherwise the pipeline rots and the whole thing is just templates in a folder:
stage→ per the touch's frontmatterlast_contacted→ today (andfirst_contactedif blank)next_actionandnext_action_date→ per the touch's frontmatternotes→ anything learned
Tell the user the row changed, and what to.
Reading a reply
| They said | Do |
|---|---|
| Yes | Touch 4 today. Then close out every other org in this cycle with touch 3. |
| Yes, but a different month | stage = warm, next_action_date = that month's T-45. This is a good outcome. |
| Not this month | Touch 3-b. stage = warm, re-ask next cycle. |
| Talk to someone else | New row for that person, source = "referred by {{name}}". Original row → not_a_fit, with the reason. |
| What's the sponsorship cost | Not a fit for this sequence. Say plainly there's no money involved either way. |
| Nothing, twice | Touch 3. Always with a re-entry date. |
Volume discipline
Eight to ten researched first-touches per cycle. If you're being asked to draft thirty, say so — ten well-researched mails convert better and don't burn a list you'll be working for the next decade.
Voice check
Before showing any draft to the user, check it against docs/voice.md for the
mail-specific tells. If the unslop skill is installed (see
skills/unslop/ATTRIBUTION.md - it is fetched, not shipped), run the draft
through that first. A draft that reads as machine-written gets deleted by someone you will
meet at a conference.
Do this to the finished draft, not to the template. Do not strip the voice out along with the tells.
References
references/meetup-facts.md— the stable meetup description. Edit here, once.references/host-icp.md— who to target, who inside the org, what to skip.references/crossover-angles.md— one framing perorg_type.references/logistics-checklist.md— for touch 4 and the T-10 reconfirm.