[H-GEN] HUMBUG meetings and talks

[Ben Fowler]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
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Hi all,

On Mon, 2003-08-18 at 19:24, Trent WADDINGTON wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2003, Clinton Roy wrote:
> > For the moment at least (and this will hopefully change sometime in
> > the future) it's best and simplest if we just hold talks in the
> > meeting room, all it takes is a little consideration of members to
> > keep quiet for half an hour.

[Please excuse me while I reply to about three different posts...]

I have to agree with Clinton here.  At this time (as Clinton and Ray
have pointed out), we're operating under the good graces of the people
at ITS so it appears as though little will be happening in the way on
getting extra room bookings, either concurrent with the Saturday HUMBUG
meetings or otherwise.  

Additionally, I think that moving to a split HUMBUG model (separate
meetings; tightly-organised weekday talk meetings, loosely-organised
'hackfest' weekend meetings) would require a lot of effort to organise.
Will existing members necessarily embrace this and make it work? Will
extra talk-format meetings attract the sort of people that'd make it
viable?  These things require thought and planning, and I personnaly
doubt that it can be made to work on a whim [1]. 

I think the 'Tobi' talk model worked well.  Provided that the attendees
do their bit to make it work, I think we should stick with it.

> > The real guts of the problem is getting talkers, as I'm sure Ben can
> > attest to.

There's a steady trickle of talks rolling in, but only because of a
handful of people nagging folks to present.  A lot of that nagging
happens on the H-TALKS mailing lists.  If people are interested in
talks-related stuff, please subscribe.  It's a low volume list, so you
won't get spammed to death :-)

> I've already brought this up with Raymond but I'll repeat it on the list:
> 
> My girlfriend and I were interested in seeing Tobi talk on Saturday.  We
> drove for over an hour through those terrible weather conditions and, with
> some effort, managed to get there by 6pm, only to discover that he was
> already answering questions.  I think this might have something to do with
> the lack of speakers.

If I recall correctly, the talk did start a little early (HUMBUG was
really keen to start the talk), but then 1) the talk didn't go for long
and 2) everyone was bombarding Tobi with questions right from the
start.  Did you come in when we'd switched the lights back on, or
earlier?

-regards,

Ben.

[1] Well, there are at least a few serious options for people interested
in making a 'serious' meeting format work:

1) Go to SAGE-AU meetings.
2) Go to QAUUG (AUUG's Queensland chapter) meetings.  This isn't an
option at the moment, because the meetings have been suspended.  I
suspect that AUUG need all the help they can get.
3) Or, we can get a small bunch of highly-motivated people together, and
work out how to work a parallel set of 'serious format' meetings into
the club.  I think this might work, provided it's planned and promoted
properly.  What do people think?


-- 
Ben Fowler <fowlerb at optushome.com.au>   
pgp keyid: 59533278, FFDE6AE7 [revoked]

"I tried to patent patent barratry as a business model...
                    but there was too much prior art"



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