Andrew McNabb wrote: > I don't want to be too critical, but I think we need to have more > interesting meetings and hold them more regularly. The last real > meeting was December 1 (I was asked to present for it just a few days in > advance). The last one before that was November 3rd (and was an > excellent meeting). Last semester there were only 4 meetings, as I > count them (I'm not counting newbie meetings). By the time we have > another real meeting, it will have been 2 meetings in 4 months! I don't > know how young students are supposed to get involved with something when > there's nothing to get involved with.
Amen. I've been a lurker on the list for a few years, occasionally asking questions and making comments. I know several people on the list personally, and they have been helpful as well. I've only been to one meeting, and it was a long time ago. I went with the anticipation of hearing a presentation on a technical subject, but instead had to sit through almost 45 minutes of announcements and inside jokes before the speaker was even introduced. All told, that meeting was almost 3 hours long, way too much time for a weekday evening. My experience has helped me find it difficult to justify a similar time investment on other occasions. This isn't meant to be a complaint, just an observation. (And one which is probably an outlier at that.) In addition to the meeting topic, it may be useful to post some kind of agenda to the list before the meeting. That would help people like me know exactly what kinds of time will be required to attend. In short, I would like to continue learning with the club, but right now the costs (in time) aren't worth the perceived returns. And I'm probably not alone. Attracting and keeping new members will mainly be a function of convincing them that they will get more out of their investment than they put in, whether it be social or technical. -Hyrum -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
