Steve Keay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote
> It is quite a difficult thing to walk into a pub and land in a room > full of strange people (people you don't know) who are all engaged in > varying levels of intense conversation. I would like to draw on some personal experience - running a successful social club for 20 somethings and 30 somethings that met weekly(we had between 15 and 30 people attending). This is what I was doing 10 years ago. The issue of huddles of strange people forming cliques and in-jokes is an issue that _any_ social organisation has to deal with. We had two solutions: one is to get everyone to own the problem and encourage all members to talk to newbies. The other is to appoint one or more hosts/hostesses to fill this role. The first approach seemed to work better, as the others don't get the feeling "it's not my job to talk to people". On the whole, IMO london.pm doesn't do too badly. When I started attending in November last year, I did feel welcome, and I did feel I had something to offer. The first meeting I attended was actually a tech meet. > I advocate more speeches involving the whole crowd - even if they're 2 > minute efforts along the lines of, "Buy a tee shirt." or, "Come to the > next technical meet." or, "Here's our new fearless leader to say a few > words about what we're here for." IMO FWIW we don't want to go overboard with speeches. That is what tech meetings are for. However, having an introductory or valedictory speech from Paul sounds like a good idea. One problem with this though, is timing. With social meets, there is an informality that we would potentially lose - we would have to have a start time and stick to it. > IMHO those moments give people a sense of, well, all coming together > to suffer the same thing and do a great deal for actually meeting > people you don't know. "How long have you been a Perl hacker?" ... "I keep trying to resist, but I can't get away from cutting code." ... "I tried some OO the other day and it was nice, but I don't touch the hard stuff - XS and all that" ;-) On the subject of free booze, might be a good idea as a one off. There is a danger that we could get into arguments about who's going to pay for it. There's also the issue of who counts as a newbie. A suggestion is to pick a special date - N year anniversary - and lay on some champagne for everyone. Ivor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and solely for the intended addressee(s). Unauthorised reproduction, disclosure, modification, and/or distribution of this email may be unlawful. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete it from your system. The views expressed in this message do not necessarily reflect those of LIFFE Holdings Plc or any of its subsidiary companies. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
