On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, David Cantrell wrote: > In the grand scheme of things, penderel isn't actually that important.
As my only way of communicating with London.pm as a entity, I'd rather disagree with that. Maybe people who use irc lots, and the list very little, disagree. If penedrel goes down for a week, and that week coincides with the venue for a meet being announced, and the meet happening, its importance might be reconsidered. > It's a pity that there's so little active crossover between us and other > geekly london groups. I'd like to try to fix that. One solution might be > joint tech meets. I suspect it's the 'programmers' core that doesn't have much overlap. Plenty of systems and network folk use perl, and co-mingle (though it's not helped by every group on the planet choosing to meet on thursdays). I've found that quite a few programmers can live their life just programming, whereas systems and network bods tend to have at least a vague idea about all 3 disciplines. Without a language-neutral group in london (that I'm aware of) I can see how there might not be a forum for them to socialise with related geeks. When I was new to the list, I quickly found people I know from work-related socialising, sysadmin-related groupings, and college/uni things, all of whom I see other places. I've yet to see the appeal of the OS advocacy, and have been put off the likes of GLLUG, the BSD groups, and similar by my limited experience with them. But if it was suggested that various groups who meet regularly clubbed together to fill a bigger venue, then I'd be in favour of that. I think it's the social aspect that helps glue people together - much as I value the tech meets, I think without the socials and the list, where you learn more about people that their perl skills, you don't get the sense of community. the hatter
