One of the core purposes of our group is to foster communication among our members and, in doing so, help our community thrive and prosper.

Typically, our members communicate/network:
* at our monthly events before the main presentation(s) and/or after the event at a local pub/bar
* via our mailing list (sf-html5-list@meetup.com)
* via our message boards (http://www.sfhtml5.or...)

As our group has grown in size, we have realized that we have the responsibility to keep the communication meaningful (maintain high signal to noise) and protect our members. This means that we often restrict unsolicited announcements/offers for third party events, products, services, career opportunities, contracting gigs, business partnerships, and so on. If you fall into this category, please read on.

At our monthly events, we generally allow for 30-second mini announcements within the 10-minute window preceding the main presentation(s), assuming these are relevant to the audience attending. Our sponsors can take up to a minute.

We approve email messages sent to our mailing list as long as they clearly address the group and their content is highly and obviously relevant to the majority of the group members. See examples below.

Finally, we encourage our members to communicate via our message boards, as these offer specific forums that our members can subscribe to based on their interest. When a message is posted to one of the forums, those subscribed are automatically notified by email.

Here are our recommendations:
* Community/free events that are universally relevant to the entire group can be announced via our mailing list
* Commercial events that are universally relevant can still be announced via our mailing list provided that our group is given some sort of a discount and/or some free passes that we can raffle off to our members
* Events that are too narrowly focused can be announced via "Community Events" message board forum
* Commercial products and services could potentially be marketed via our mailing list if they are highly relevant to our members and if our group gets a special discount
* Free/open-source products (and services) can only be marketed via our mailing list if they are highly relevant to our members
* Job offers and contracting opportunities can be posted at "Job Listings" message board forum


As a general rule of thumb, we will not send any email communication to our members on your behalf - except in some special circumstances. We suggest that you email the group directly, and we will approve/decline your message as per this policy.

Note that attempting to spam our group with unsolicited emails, discussion postings, irrelevant "event suggestions", etc. could result in your account being banned from our group.