Our first Home Assistant Community Day will be on May 24th this year 🎉, and with a month to go, here is all the information you need to take part.

The community will be leading meetups across the globe, so find your nearest event and register now! They’re all free and will be full of smart people with smart homes. If you don’t see your city on this list, we’re encouraging the community to host their own meetups, so keep reading to learn more.

Our biggest party yet

I’m sure you’re all wondering, “Missy, what is a Community Day?”. In its simplest form, it’s a single day in which community members around the world set up local meetups with each other. That leaves a lot open, though. Where do you sign up? How do you host your own meetup? How many people should show up? Where’s the best place to hold a meetup? …that’s a lot of questions! 😳 Luckily, I have all the answers 😉.

Locations and registering to attend

To coordinate all these meetups, we are using Luma, a site focused on tech meetups. All the current events can be found below or on our Home Assistant Community Day calendar.

All Community Day events are free, so register before spaces run out! (No worries, there are waitlists!). We also have people who work full-time on Home Assistant attending these events. To find out who you can meet, head over to Luma 😎!

Host your own

Is your city, country, or continent not on the list ⁉️ Time to take matters into your own hands, and create your own meetup.

Example event page for our London meetup 💂‍♂️🇬🇧

Using Luma, create an account, and navigate to our Home Assistant Community Day event page, select Submit Event > Create New Event (the button is above the calendar on the right). Don’t stress if you don’t have a venue yet—you can add it later! So people know you’re part of the worldwide party, we’ve created an invite graphic you can set as the event image. Make sure you follow this checklist when you create your event:

✅ Event Name = “(city name) meetup”
✅ Time zone = your local time
✅ Date = Saturday, May 24
✅ Time = your choosing! (4 hours max)
✅ Add Event Location = your city (or venue once you have one)
✅ Capacity = 50 max (less if the venue is smaller), and toggle the Waitlist on
✅ Hosts = Add me (Missy Quarry – [email protected]) as a host of the event so I can make sure it appears in the main event calendar

Click Create Event once you’ve followed that checklist, then come let everyone know in the Home Assistant Community Day meetup thread on Discord or the Social section of the Community forum! 🎉

Capacity: If you’re wondering why we capped the capacity at 50, this is mostly to ensure that hosts don’t feel overwhelmed with finding a venue big enough. Also, that’s the average number of attendees who have registered for the last couple of events. You may have more people who want to attend your event – that’s where the waitlist comes in handy. 👏🏻

Location: This will depend on the host, but we highly encourage hosts to check out local venues like cafes, community spaces, or bars. Please make sure the venue agrees to you hosting the event there and that it’s an accommodating and welcoming place for everyone in our community. Consider accessibility and the facilities required for large groups (access to transport, food, drink, and washrooms)—this is also why we ask that people not host at their homes. Feel free to consider other public spaces, for instance, I pulled some strings at Microsoft for a cool space on campus to host the Redmond meetup. Just remember, the venue fees are up to the host to pay.

What to provide/organize: These are free events, and hosts are not obligated to provide anything but good conversation. Keep it simple—this is just a chance for people to meet and chat.

Keep attendees informed:  You can always talk it out with your registered attendees via Luma—hosts will have the ability to “Send a Blast” out to their attendees. Also, the Community Day thread on Discord will be a great way to hook up with attendees on that platform. We’ll promote these events on the Home Assistant socials, to ensure we reach the whole community.

Clashes:  If two or more events are requested in the same city, we’ll link up hosts so they can organize things together.

Have more questions for me? Send me a message on Discord (@adorablecyborg) or email— I’m absolutely happy to help you out where I can! 😌

See you soon

Our team has been meeting the community all over the world, and y’all never cease to amaze me. People are doing really cool stuff with Home Assistant, and you’ll leave meetups with new automation ideas, cool DIY plans, and maybe even some new friends. Honestly, if you’re like me, every one of my family members are sick of hearing about my smart home, it’s time to meet some people who only want to talk about that! 🤝

If you can’t make it on May 24th, don’t fret—there’ll be a Community Day next year! Although Community Day will be special, you can always get on the Home Assistant community meetup channel in Discord or the Social section of the forum to set up group meetups throughout the year. 😊

I can’t wait to see all the events added and how many people register for these meetups! 🤩 I’ll share more information as the day approaches, including how you can share your meetup photo 📸, which we’ll feature on our channels. See you on the socials!