How to Run a Virtual Lean Coffee for Your Meetup Community

For the March WNB.rb meetup, I tried something different. Instead of our usual speaker format, I facilitated a Lean Coffee online, a structured but agenda-less discussion where attendees set the topics and vote on what to talk about. It went really well, and I wanted to share how it worked in case you're thinking about trying one yourself. What is Lean Coffee? Lean Coffee is a meeting format where there's no pre-set agenda. Participants propose topics at the start, vote on what interests them most, and then discuss in priority order with timeboxed rounds. When the timer runs out, the group votes to keep going or move on. Simple as that. The Setup: What We Used I used Lean Coffee Table for the board and Google Meet for video. Lean Coffee Table handles the topic cards, voting, timer, and topic flow, and participants don't need to create accounts. I pre-loaded some seed topics to get things started, pasted the Google Meet link into the board, and shared one link with attendees. That was i