Where I work we have such "lunch meetup" every first Thursday of the month.
It has been more than a year since we started it so I can say that it can work quite well, as long as it is well organized.
Here are some implicit rules we follow :
It is scheduled. People must return to work afterward, so the hour must be respected and we can't afford to wait for everyone to arrive.
It is a short meetup. For the same reasons as above, we follow a specific pattern with 30 minutes of slideshow/live-coding, followed by 30 minutes of discussions and questions.
We kinda allow people to eat during the session as long as the food is not too smelly and they keep the room clean (we use our biggest meeting room for this, but a "real" meeting could be happening there in the afternoon)
We offer some refreshments and snacks but we expect people to have a "real" lunch.
When we are in the mood, we even broadcast the "show" for people who could not assist in person but still want to follow the presentation. By the way, we are still not satisfied with our tool to do that, if you have suggestions I'm listening :)
And last but not least we have the agreement and approval of the management team because it helps improve the company's image.
One limit is we only allow internal people to propose a subject for now. I personally think it is a mistake but it helps control the quality of the presentation. Plus we are offered 1 day to prepare the show (slides, speech...).
So the best advice I could give it is to consult your management and see if they are willing to help you setup this sort of meetup where you work (just tell them they could meet amazing talents to hire and they might accept).
I hopes this may help and motivate people do the same where their work.
Where I work we have such "lunch meetup" every first Thursday of the month.
It has been more than a year since we started it so I can say that it can work quite well, as long as it is well organized.
Here are some implicit rules we follow :
One limit is we only allow internal people to propose a subject for now. I personally think it is a mistake but it helps control the quality of the presentation. Plus we are offered 1 day to prepare the show (slides, speech...).
So the best advice I could give it is to consult your management and see if they are willing to help you setup this sort of meetup where you work (just tell them they could meet amazing talents to hire and they might accept).
I hopes this may help and motivate people do the same where their work.
And just in case, here is a link for the next event (in french) :
meetup.com/fr-FR/VISEO-Tech-an-Hou...
(Sorry for bad english btw, frenchy french here)