First, apologies: My original was perhaps a bit more acidic than intended. Ted Roche wrote: > Bruce Dawson wrote: > > >> So either we have to increase the priority of going to a meeting, or >> lower the priority of people staying away. The former can be done by >> having higher quality speakers, "famous people", more interesting >> subjects, more career/job benefits, ... The latter can't really be done. >> > I think you may have inadvertently created an artificial 'either-or' and > there may be other variables to tweak. Let's not change the meeting > content or quality at all, but increase by 10 the number of people who > know the meeting is happening. With no other changes on our part, we > should see more people attending, some of whom decide to stay. > Agreed that increasing attendance would be better. My intent in creating the "artificial either-or" was to establish a bottom line, which in further messages was substantially changed from where I thought it was headed. >> Perhaps we should look at ways of improving our presentations, >> escalating our speakers (by "creating famous people"), or ... >> > > I have spoken at two dozen professional conferences over the years, and > I think the quality of our presentations can't be beat, and certainly > not for the cost (segfault - Division by Zero!). Seriously, I think that > the issue is simply this: > > Ten percent of the 300 people who know about any particular meeting attend. > > I think that's a good percentage. I do to. For some reason, I thought we had a larger membership, but upon checking the facts, I find we have only about 180 on the announce list (and 260+ on the discuss list). So we're doing *very* good by exceeding the ratio. And this isn't counting the untold numbers reading the papers or listening to the radio, (and because the metrics for counting readers of our announcements in those media are nebulous, I'll give it a "1" for the equation.) > ... > >> Provide a non-time and non-location dependent way of "meeting". >> > > I believe that's known as "not meeting." > Its also known as a geek teaser, _and_ allows for "virtual attendance" for those with good or feeble reasons for not attending. If things go according to plan, they'll be able to join in much the same way one does on radio talk shows. > *rimshot* > > I think preserving what goes on in meetings is the best way to establish > a legacy of knowledge from the group. I'm trying to do that with the > notes I post to the group, and I'd really like to see more effort in > capturing the meetings in video or audio format. > I'm working on the audio format. The video seems to require more resources and willingness than I/we have at the moment. >> Our mailing list, archives, and wiki are our greatest standing >> resources. Why don't we capitalize on them and let "meat-space" meetings >> become more informal. We should increase the capture mechanisms because >> those meat-space meetings have useful content. >> > > I do think that I'd like our meetings to be informal, and that there be > more time to chat. I've heard several folks remark that the best meeting > they attended recently was one with no presentation. However, I also > think the presentations are of great value and shouldn't be > discontinued. We ought to find some way to have our cake and eat it, too. > Oh, the presentations are of value, don't get me wrong. I was attempting to indicate our resources could be better focused on our strengths, rather than our weaknesses (if meeting attendance is considered weak).
However, after finally doing my homework, and realizing the slightly-better-than-squishy numbers are better than I thought, I'll recant my above position and include the meetings as a strength. So go ahead, keep improving! :-) --Bruce _______________________________________________ gnhlug-org mailing list gnhlug-org@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-org/
