I think a good compromise is to have local meeting conversations on the code4libcon google group. It keeps the conversations in a central place initiallty created to faciliate face to face meetings.
/dev -----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries on behalf of Ed Summers Sent: Wed 4/7/2010 10:53 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Code4Lib North planning continues On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 10:43 PM, William Denton <w...@pobox.com> wrote: > So far there are just three people with ideas for talks (me, Walter Lewis, > Art Rhyno). Have the other local chapters found it works well to have more > time for informal stuff, or lightning talks, or "Ask Anything" like I see > NYC is doing? Sometimes with a smaller group people don't talk so much, but > sometimes they do. The thing that bums me out is that this discussion list was largely created because there were all these discussions going on in niches like xml4lib, web4lib, perl4lib, php4lib, oss4lib, etc ... and not enough conversation about computing and libraries and cross-fertilization between projects/environments. Now we're seeing the code4lib discussion list itself fragment into code4libmdc, code4lib-north, code4libnyc, code4lib-northwest, etc. I guess an argument could be made that the conversations going on in this sublists would overwhelm code4lib proper with all sorts of local noise. But I think ideally we should have crossed that bridge when we came to it. I think if folks on code4lib saw what was going on in different locales it would inspire people to do stuff where they are too. //Ed