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On Tuesday 28 September 2004 10:15 pm, Tom Brough wrote:
This is all true, and I have to admit attending 5 of the above myself, however one observation I would like to make is that I have noticed a tendency / trend towards limited time span between conception and implementation of meetings (some times weeks (as in 2) mostly days.
I think there's two things going on. 1. People don't have a lot of time to prepare for a one-off large event. 2. When there is a demand, there's usually someone in dire need so the schedule gets put forward. I am working on that with the new site (hate to raise expectations - it isn't doing this yet!) - taking a line from meetup.com where the scheduling of the meeting is taken out of the hands of the members. If the meeting happens, fine. If it lapses, there's always another one. The problem with meetup.com is the local geography. We just can't expect to run regular meetings in the same place each month - we need to get around. That much travelling for a regular meeting causes problems the other side too. So. What to do. meetup.com has overhauled their site recently and arranging meetings in new venues and cities is now free. I'm listed as the organiser for these topics: http://c.meetup.com/3/ http://linux.meetup.com/60/ http://openpgp.meetup.com/33/ http://perl.meetup.com/5/ (Matt Lee is listed for a Python group on the same service.) Now, NONE of these groups have enough people to make regular meetings - darn it most only have ME! :-)) By using the meetup.com model to arrange meetings for the GLUG, we could end up with regular meetings that rotate around the region. Now this is something we've been 'talking' about for years. What I need is this: 1. Regular venues. Exeter, Plymouth, Launceston/Liskeard, St. Austell, Newquay, Falmouth, Okehampton, Paignton, - that's 8. So one meeting a month held in one of 8 locations. We'd all get a meeting twice a year - about the same as now. 2. Regular hosts. meetup.com isn't designed for this kind of rotation - they plan for a meeting a month in the one base location of the group. What I might be able to configure is an adaptation of their model. 3. Previous large meetings have been around major events: LinuxInstallDay, SoftwareFreedomDay, which come around regularly. We could bolt these on to the round-robin to make 2 more 'venues'. What we need is commitment from local members to a venue. Will it work? I don't know - we can only try. I WILL need help with the code on this one. It's likely to have to work in this environment: 1. Main website in Python 2. Support scripts in PHP or Perl. 3. Maybe stay with majordomo, maybe move to mailman. This could be a simple announce-only list or a low output ordinary list. meetings@ or rotation@x I need considerable help with the Python code - I simply haven't got time to learn yet another language. It would simply need to pick up the data from a MySQL database (populated via Perl or PHP) to create the Events in the CMS. A simple table of id, venue, host, timestamp. Or it could do the whole job and work out the rotations and mail the new list directly. It would be run using cron. Matt?
My point however, is that I feel its time that we planned and co-ordinated something with the public (non-member) in mind
Planning a single event far in advance tends to get lost in the diary and all manner of things crop up closer to the time. Richard is a case in point with the meeting in Roche being moved to James' house. If meetings were regular and care is taken to cancel meetings that will not be attended, planning can be ongoing.
, or given the vast area (in land mass) that DCGLUG covers compared with other GLUG's perhaps a roadshow taking in major venues in Devon and Cornwall.
It's a kind of roadshow, just that we minimise the number of people travelling
100 miles each way.
A set of dates, times and places advertised locally by local members (well in advance), but supported by the group as a whole were ever possible each contributing from his / her own unique abilities .
I was thinking of: Third Tuesday of January: Exeter Second Friday of February: Falmouth Fourth Saturday of March: Plymouth First Tuesday . . . you get the idea.
And secondly perhaps its time to have an area on DCGLUG that caters for "newbies" (ecck I hate that term), so that those members that don't mind answering seemingly daft questions can do so, but not disturb or enrage
Perhaps instead, what we could do is increase the amount of information that people enter onto the website - give a better indication of their experience - as part of the sign-up. I don't know, that could be too awkward with the current idea for the design.
questions. As the existing mail group can be un-subscribed as well as subscribed I should think this would not be too hard to arrange
What, a second group? A sub-group? Don't like that idea myself. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk/ http://www.dclug.org.uk/ http://www.isbn.org.uk/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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