What does it take to get a technical user group started and then sustained? We started with bribery (free books!) and a great talk from a local expert, followed with many pitchers of good beer. And lots of home-baked cookies. Now we have a group that meets every month and always has interesting things to talk about. I'd like to present a case-study that describes my experience with the Portland PostgreSQL Users Group. I'll list our starting ingredients and motivation, describe the methods we used to get people to the meeting, and the tactics to keep people coming back. I'll draw on some popular books (i.e. _The Tipping Point_, Martha Stewart's _Entertaining_, Douglas' _PostgreSQL_), feedback from our members and members of other successful user groups, and maybe an academic paper or two on community building.

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