First ManchLUG Meeting

[Benjamin Scott]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 10:09 PM, Chip Marshall <chip at 2bithacker.net> wrote:
> Just wanted to fire off a quick e-mail to thank everyone who came
> out tonight to the first (hopefully of many) ManchLUG meeting.

  On behalf of... well, nobody, really... well, myself... but I'm not
empowered to speak for anyone else... but I'd like to think that my
opinion would reflect the sentiments of others... er, I'll come in
again --

  Thanks for hosting it!  I enjoyed it, and I think everyone else did,
too.  You and Kenta did a great job.  Well done!

  FYI, I counted at least 23 people there.

> For next month, I'd like to get a but more structure in place,
> have some organized discussion topics, maybe a short
> presentation.

  One thing that was discussed over in my corner of the room was that
having a "formal topic" may actually discourage attendance.  If
there's a presentation scheduled for reticulating splines, anyone not
interested in spline reticulation is likely to skip it.

  One thing PySIG does that may help counter this is to have a block
of time explicitly scheduled for general Q&A, newbies, and "gotchas".
As I recall, they do that at 6:30 and any formal presentation starts
at 7 PM, and this is explicitly advertised, so people can choose what
they want.

  Or you could just have a meeting every month, with informal Q&A, and
get people used to showing up every month.  Then when presentations
start happening, they're already in your evil clutches!
Mooohhohohoahahahhaha... I mean, they're used to showing up and may be
more likely to continue to do so.

  Or you could go right to lining up speakers every month.  The Nashua
group did it for years, and Concord, Peterborough and Dartmouth are
still doing it.  I guess it works!

  I'm not advocating any particular approach; just trying to stir some
discussion.  And Kenta and Chip are, of course, free to do whatever
they like, since they're the ones actually doing the work.

  Anyone else have comments/suggestions/ideas/etc?

-- Ben