[pm-h] July Houston.pm: Call for presentation

[B. Estrade]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 7:28 AM, G. Wade Johnson via Houston
<houston at pm.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Jun 2014 13:39:39 -0400
> Todd Rinaldo via Houston <houston at pm.org> wrote:
>
>> I have a partially formed idea I've been tossing around. There is a
>> ton of content online from past and present YAPCs now. Not to mention
>> other conferences. Often this content is coming from the author of the
>> feature / method being discussed. I was wondering if we could somehow
>> integrate that into a meeting with discussion.
>>
>> The format might be:
>> 1. We vote up and watch a list of videos people like (possibly clipped
>> to the good parts)
>> 2. Discussion / Q&A of content.
>>
>> I get that I and others could do this on our own. So I'm hesitant to
>> say there's value. I thought I'd throw it out to the list and see if
>> anyone's had any thoughts based on the idea.
>
> [Drat, I didn't reply all on this one.]
>
> I can see this as a start to a discussion in the group. On the other
> hand, would everyone really want to sit as a group to watch a video of
> someone presenting somewhere else?
>
> Any real opinions?

I think there is something to Todd's idea that could work and not just
be a bunch of geeks watching Youtube videos while sitting idle.

Perhaps we could dedicate some time (5-10 min, max) to providing some
"recommended videos" list.  I know that inevitably there are talks
that are and are not worth your time.  Some of us could help compile
this offline.

Likewise, coming off the heels of YAPC, would it be worth
brainstorming with the group to get a list of interesting topics that
attendees might wish to hear or talk about?  I have this half-brained
idea that if we cultivate a list of "interesting topics," it might
dawn on someone that their specialty/interest is also an interest of
others. Once we get an initial list, I am happy to feed and water that
list. I am interested in such a list, not just for Houston.pm, but as
a general list that anyone looking for Perl talks could turn to to see
what might be some interesting topics.

Looking ahead .. Another approach that we might want to consider is
that instead of collecting ideas or topics to present, is to
proactively seek out a stable of individuals who want to present and
who like to present. It seems like it'd be a lot easier to grow a core
group of presenters rather than each time trying to convince someone
new to step up.  The reason I say this is because we have a group of
people who would certainly talk about (whatever) if asked. I would, I
know a few others who would (and do) regularly.

We should absolutely seek out new speakers and highly encourage it,
but in my opinion it's a whole lot easier to generate talks if we have
a maintained list of topics and a group of people who we know are
willing to talk (about anything.)  This would also work well for
"lightning talk" meetings if we make sure the people who we know will
talk (about something) will show up.  I think that focusing on having
a regular rotation of @speakers willing to talk about @things (as
determined by work we do to survey the group) is a good recipe for
building up regular attendance.

(beware, blue sky tangent)

At some point if we have some "go to" people and have built up
attendance (bc we're serving real needs), I think it'd be super cool
to take that leap and organize a bona fide 1 or 2 day Houston Perl
Workshop - especially considering that 2/4 of the YAPC::NA sponsors
that had tables are also sponsors of Houston.pm, I imagine that we
have that part covered pretty well.  I say all of this fully
recognizing the fact that I am also volunteering to play a large part
in any effort to organize this.

Thank you,
Brett

>
> G. Wade
>
>> On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 5:46 PM, G. Wade Johnson via Houston
>> <houston at pm.org> wrote:
>> > Hi everyone,
>> >
>> > It's about 3 weeks to the next Houston.pm meeting on July 10 at
>> > cPanel.
>> >
>> > Does anyone have a topic they would like to present?
>> >
>> > Is there any kind of topic you guys would like to hear about?
>> >
>> >  * Perl beginner
>> >    - we've had a couple of these lately
>> >    - ?
>> >  * Perl advanced
>> >    - ?
>> >  * General programming
>> >    - ?
>> >  * Open Source projects we should know about
>> >    - ?
>> >  * Tools/environment
>> >    - we haven't had editor presentations in a while
>> >    - ?
>> >  * Security
>> >    - ?
>> >  * Hardware
>> >    - doing anything cool with hardware and Perl?
>> >    - ?
>> >  * Something unrelated to Perl, but still of interest to the group
>> >    - Mind hacks
>> >    - Making
>> >    - ?
>> >
>> > Remember the quality of meetings is under your control.
>> > G. Wade
>> > --
>> > It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter
>> > how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
>> >                                                   -- Richard Feynman
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > Houston at pm.org
>> > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/houston
>> > Website: http://houston.pm.org/
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Be a good ancestor.                                   -- Jonas Salk
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