VTR Open Day - Demonstrations, Come Visit and Volunteers

[Timothy S. Nelson]

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, Gabor Szabo wrote:

> Hi Scott and others who attend the VTR day,
> 
> I am speaking from Israel.pm here.
> I have seen this VTR event mentioned last year already and
> I have been wondering what is such even look like. Who finances it,
> what is going on on such day, what are the benefits for those who
> organize it and sponsor it and what are the benefits for the user group
> and for the simple visitor ? How many people are coming ?
> 
> I wonder what such even would do in our local market and whom should I
> pitch with the idea of copying this event.
> 
> So I'd really appreciate seeing some reports either by you ppl or by
> others whom attend it. If you could send me some pointers, that would
> be great as well.

	I'll give you a "visitors perspective" on it.  I went to the day last 
year, but was not involved in organising it.  Basically, there was a building, 
and inside there were a bunch of different stalls (or rooms in some cases) 
dedicated to different user groups.  There was a Perl Mongers room 
(obviously), and I "helped out", ie. hung around and talked to visitors about 
Perl.  Some of the organisers of the Perl Mongers room were also members of 
Perl Training Australia, so I'm sure you can see an additional motivation for 
them :).  
	There were also user groups for things like Zope, Extreme Programming, 
Unix Administration, and the like, and also a rep from the Melbourne PC Users 
group.  
	VTR is, IIRC, the organisation that organises it.  

	For me, the benefits were going and talking to people.  The fact that 
my distance means that I'm unable to attend normal Perl Mongers meetings 
(which are Wednesday evening), but was able to attend this (Saturday) makes me 
different from others, but it was also interesting to talk to some of the 
people at other stalls (for example, I was able to get one of the XP people to 
explain what story cards are, and why I'd want to use them).  

	The benefits for the user group are things like:
-	Making additional people aware of the users group
-	Possibly interest new people in the thing the user group represents 
	(Perl in our case)
-	I'm sure you can see the benefits for Perl Training Australia

	How many people came last year?  Lots.  Most of the time, there were 
enough people around that everyone at the Perl Mongers stall had a visitor to 
talk to (at least in ther afternoon, which is when I was mostly there), and 
the rest of the time was good at least for me just to talk to the other Perl 
Mongers.  

	The questions I haven't answered are:
-	Who finances it (guess: VTR?  I'm pretty sure it's their building 
	anyway)
-	What are the benefits for those who organise and sponsor it?  
	Basically publicity, I think

	Hopefully someone can answer these last two questions for you.  

---------------------------------------------------------------------
| Name: Tim Nelson                 | Because the Creator is,        |
| E-mail: wayland at smartchat.net.au | I am                           |
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