Most local dev communities are filled with abandoned meetup groups, recruiters, wantraprenuers, and boring topics.
Your local JS community could be better, in fact maybe you don't even have one. With a little ambition, some planning, and getting your friends involved you could really improve things as well as enrich your own mental state and make a bunch of new, really passionate friends.
Almost two years ago a co-worker and I were talking at lunch about how bad things in the LA dev community were and what we "might" do to make it better. That night we saw a tweet about giving the js.la domain to who ever wanted to use it, we decided it was destiny.
I'll share a little history about js.la and a bunch of tips about organizing, leading, building and most importantly participating in your local dev community. Consistency and quality is crucial, I will walk you through the methods that have worked well for js.la and how we picked up support and co-orginizers along the way without getting burnt out.