[H-GEN] Activitives at Humbug

[Greg Black]

On 2006-02-26, Gary Curtis wrote:
> On 2/25/06, Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net> wrote:
>> On 2006-02-25, Stephen Thorne wrote:
>> 
>>> I do not go to HUMBUG in order to watch TV shows.
>> 
>> Nor do I.  And I find the idea of imposing them on those who to
>> meetings for the purposes of Humbug activities to be extremely
>> antisocial.
> 
> On the contrary, I believe a small amount of video at meetings
> is quite social.

I'm sure Gary knows this, but (in case some readers don't know
it) "social" is not the opposite of "antisocial".  For instance,
if members of a household decide to have a party and invite lots
of friends over to join in, that is clearly a "social" event.
If some of the guests get roaring drunk and spill out into the
street, smashing bottles, vomiting in neighbours' gardens and
vandalising their cars, that is "antisocial".

In the context of a Humbug meeting, inflicting big screen TV on
the entire group comes quite clearly under the "antisocial"
category.  Bearing in mind the published aims of Humbug, I would
suggest that there are only two circumstances where big screen
TV would be OK at a meeting:

  * As part of a very brief demonstration to accompany a talk
    whose purpose was to show members how to use their home Unix
    system for showing movies, etc.

  * After a request was made to the Humbug Exec to show
    something that fitted in with Humbug's aims and an
    announcement was posted to the announce list stating that a
    specific part of a specific meeting was going to be devoted
    to the showing.

If those principles were followed, then people know what to
expect and can adjust their plans according to their interests.

In my opinion, anything beyond that is just antisocial.

Cheers, Greg