APM: Meeting Report

[Chris Millard]

Taylor Carpenter++

A shorter presentation format has several advantages, not the least of
which is encouraging presenters to use their time wisely.  When all you
have is 30 minutes, that time is precious.  It tends to help avoid
presentations that bog down in minutiae or simplistic tutorials.

I suspect some presentations will need to take longer, though, and I think
that's OK.  Deep dives are fun, and often more illuminating when dealing
with the more esoteric aspects of our craft.  I firmly believe what we do
is more art than science.

On the project side, I think a project would be a fantastic idea.  However,
I would prefer that it be done on the side, with meetings before/after the
PM meeting, or on another day.  A project can largely be done remote, with
quick hacking sessions to do tutoring, brainstorming, and breaking through
roadblocks.

In regards to what the project is, I'll echo discomfort around the idea of
working on something that will be used commercially*.  That sounds ripe for
a conflict of interests.  That said, I was NOT at the meeting this week,
and i don't feel i can speak to the proposal on the table.  Consider these
general thoughts.

Great discussion, guys, keep it up.

All the best,
Chris

* An open source project which could be picked up for commercial use I have
no issue with (see: perl).

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Jeremy Fluhmann <fluhmann at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Taylor Carpenter <taylor at codecafe.com>wrote:
>
>> A project/coding-interactive focused meetup group is an interesting idea.
>>
>> I suggest having a spin-off meeting that allows people who are interested
>> in the project to attend those meetings.   This could be a single on-going
>> project, or a hack meetup to work on several projects of interest....
>>
>> For the actual PM meetup itself, IMO, it should keep a broad focus in
>> general -- even if we have talks about a specific topic.   Otherwise the
>> group will alienate everyone who is not interested in the current topic.
>> Personally I prefer 2 or 3 talks at a meeting that are short, so that
>> everyone has a chance of at least one topic being presented of interest.
>> Giving some time for people to ask questions, bring up problems they are
>> working on, and chat in general is also good.
>>
>> Zombies and Perl as well as well as problems solved with Perl for the
>> Trello Bot project are examples of short talks I would be happy to see at
>> future PM meetings.
>>
>> BTW, adding an additional hour at the end of the current PM meeting to
>> allow people to hang out and hack would be fine as well.  Anyone
>> uninterested in the project can leave after the meeting.
>>
>
> +1
>
> Cheers,
> Jeremy
> --
>
> Jeremy Fluhmann
> *http://twitter.com/jfluhmann**
> http://jfluhmann.edublogs.org
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>
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-- 
Cheers,
Chris
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