In terms of different motivations, maybe beginners want to do something or know how to do it, and experts want to communicate it/welcome? Some thoughts....

Start by, and repeatedly, confirm listeners are following along or that they asked something that will help them get what they're hoping for. Are there ways to keep such harmony between the speaker-listener? Back and forth. That a beginner does not necessarily know how to phrase the question itself is good to recognize. What's typically desired, ask if that's what they are going for. Prompt for, and suggest, examples.

Avoid getting too deep into tangents. Tangents themselves are fine and can add colorful nuance and charm to the experience, but going too deep without enough breadth is what I might watch out for. A second or third expert in a beginner group can maybe interrupt other experts to keep it focused in this sense, eg "no he means X, first get Y"-- and they agree quickly. Confirmed basics should be easy for experts for such purposes/context of helping, and if advice is confirmed by other (experts) maybe that's good too. If experts feel a beginner is barking up the wrong tree, suggesting other trees. Often, beginners don't have a sense of dependencies for their eventual goal, so adding things like "assuming you want to do X, you must do Y or Z first" might help.

When a beginner gets it, get them to explain what the critical point was in getting it, what was holding them up before, if they had started with something else or another tack, or if they had a time machine to go back and explain in a sentence or two, what to tell your former self. And recruit them to help other beginners with their new perspective, as well as ongoing.

As an expert, step back. Don't be the person who introduces the session. Don't be the person who advertises the session. Don't be the person who answers the questions. Etc.
Perhaps you could pinch some ideas from Code Club or Coder Dojo?

If teaching, give beginners something they can succeed at quickly. Walk them through a basic tutorial so that they can "get their hands wet." If possible, have VM's already set up that they can connect to with some running template.

(Yes, that's a mixed metaphor. I find them amusing.)

Great points, Ned.
Thanks for sharing.
I try to support beginners only slack project, but thar requires personal picking in-out and not sure if it is scalable.

One thing I’d emphasise is that asking a question is a contribution: everyone who didn’t know will benefit from the answer your question elicits, even if they didn’t ask or if the question didn’t even occur to them.

I don’t have specific suggestions for achieving this, but I think the mood should be that whether expert or beginner, you are not there to gain accolades or admission – you are there for the group, which is coming together to elevate all its members, and both sides learn by participating. Contributing isn’t a trickle-down process from the experts to the passive unwashed masses, it’s a give and take with each other.

These are great suggestions, thanks! I especially like the idea of celebrating all questions as contributions, both to provide positive feedback for venturing a question, and to underscore the collaborative nature of the session.

In the spirit of "every question is a contribution", I find that one-on-one feedback is always helpful. If a beginner spoke up, find something to like about what they said and tell them about that, directly.

"I liked your question about X in last night's [talk/study group]. I hope you'll ask more questions" is a good way to get that person to continue to model the behavior you want to see. Ideally, this leads others to follow this example, and you get a lot more opportunities to positively reinforce this behavior.

Not directly related, but does it really make sense to remove all experts, or wouldn't it make more sense to keep one dedicated "supervisor" in there who will pledge to stay silent unless there is some groupthink of wrong ideas coming up? Maybe I misunderstood the format, but it reminds me of study groups at university and while it's cool and all to bang your head against a problem until you solve it, sometimes a silent teaching assistant who will correct your errors before you go on an hour long path in the wrong direction is really helpful.

@_sr: you are right, a gentle expert in the room is a definite plus, for the reasons you mention. I didn't mean to imply we wanted no experts.

The problem is, everybody wants to do a "beginners group", every conference and every user group wants to target beginners, and that's understandable because there are a lot of them.

But where are the explicitly labeled "intermediate to advance" groups for the people of intermediate level who want to improve?

The facilitator of the meeting may structure the agenda so that there are points where questions or information are solicited. Depending on the topic these might be requests for experiences or projects that participants may have that are illustrative. These could be within a presentation topic, so there is less emotional weight. Another meeting agenda could be "Around the Room", where everybody is solicited in some known order, whether alphabetic, by time of joining the meeting, or if physically present, around the room's seating chart. Everyone is encouraged to say something, even or especially, if they are just agreeing with or emphasizing a previous participant's input, thanking some other participant, or saying "nothing to add."

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