Tips & Tricks for organizing REI meetups

[Shane Thompson]

As the saying goes, "if no one is doing what you need to be done, just do it yourself." Or something like that. 

In my area there is a serious lack of organized collaboration going on. It's not like Southern California where I'm originally from where if you can think of something there are probably dozens of meetups for it already. Kodiak, Ak, although beautiful, is a whole other... thing. (I was never much of a writer)

Anyway,

What tips, tricks, materials, presentations, etc. do you have for someone who wants to start a meetup group from scratch in their local area?