On 5/11/06, Jonathan Daugherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
# My prediction is that this mailing list is the miracle that drives
# meeting attendance.
Well, with most LUGs it helps if there's some incentive to come. If
pdxlug meetings continue to be as informal and as unstructured and as
devoid of content as they have been, then my prediction is that the
attendance will continue to slump. :) No offense or anything, just
stating the facts. :)
Well it is hard to organize content into a meeting if you don't have a
mailing list to do it with. For the most part people talk about what
they have been dealing with recently at meetings, and when they don't
talk about what those things are in the mailing list it becomes a
gamble as to whether or not you will find them interesting. Worst
case scenario you have a bunch of newbs, who are mostly interested in
things most of us conquered years ago.
I think things basically fall into three categories
1. Things we learned, or worked on that we are excited about, and want to share
2. Things we are trying to learn, and want help with
3. Social. Just making friends.
Jonathan's idea for a hackfest seems to combine all three quite
nicely, and if done well could draw lots of attendance.
Another possibility is listing things we want to talk about, and
voting for the best ones to be opening topics days before the meeting
so we know ahead of time if it is a meeting we want to bother
attending.
The most attended meeting I have been too was the one where Greg K-H
showed up. According to an article I read in the Oregonian this week
there are well over 2000 people in Oregon with open source jobs.
There have got to be more well known people we can get to show up.
Bruce Perens posted on our mailing list once for example. When the
founder of CDbaby.com showed up at Free Geek he drew quite a crowd to
the ruby meeting taking place there. Any ideas how to identify the
visionaries we can get to show up, and how to get them in the door?
O'Reilly brought Greg as part of a book tour as I recall. Is this a
good way to get people to show up? Technical book tours should be
easy enough to find out about.
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