[niederrhein.pm] Niederrhein.pm Treffen Oktober 2014 (21.10.2014 - wer die Mail ungelesen löschen will)

[Peter Rabbitson]

I am adding the original re-founder T. Raudssus to the thread

On 10/17/2014 06:05 AM, Jens Rehsack wrote:
> No response (beside Rolands private message) means the mailing list is dead and meetup.com will be the promising successor?

I think the disconnect here is that this is an un-obvious question. I.e. 
it's a "I wonder if", not an "ah fuck it - the list is useless anyway".

On a personal note - I never reply to "announcement" emails - I am too 
far behind on my correspondence without taking these "checkmarks" into 
account. The only reason I take care of RSVP-ing on the meetup site is 
so that random observers can see that the group is alive.

Concerning titles etc: I personally do not (and never did) consider 
myself a leader or even a coorganizer of the current reincarnation of 
the group. The reason meetup lists me as a organizer is because of the 
"1st come" model, and because I am paying the 10EUR/mo to keep the 
listing running. I did add the extra "venue" of meetup.com not in order 
to make it harder/easier for existing members, but because I saw it as 
an opportunity to raise awareness of "there is a group that does X". 
Consider the following search (no login necessary):

http://www.meetup.com/find/?keywords=programming&radius=10&userFreeform=K%C3%B6ln%2C+Germany

And it did somewhat work - there were at least 3 new members that I know 
of that visited our little meetups. Keep in mind that it's not my 
personal goal to grow our numbers (more on this below). In short I am 
not in any way married to the idea, so if most people really *dislike* 
the virtually free advertisement we get through meetup - maybe I should 
kill the account. I am open to ideas either way (including handing it 
over/adding more orgas).

A far as the name goes - I never cared ;) So I have no vote in the 
question posed by Winfried. I do know however that both Torsten and Jens 
have strong opinions on name/location so I would recommend treading 
lightly, as this is a surprisingly explosive subject.

Now to address the central issue (which is - what do you want your pm 
group to be). I already mentioned that I do not consider myself a 
central figure of the meetup. I visit it as often as I visit the 
AmsteramX group, and I do both for the simple purpose of maintaining 
long established ties, and possibly (but not necessarily) form new ones 
on occasion. That is - visiting allows me to stay in touch with the 
fringes of my echo chamber, and also gives me an opportunity to "blabber 
about tech" in-person (which is something I lack as a telecommuter). One 
important point is that I do not come with the expectation of learning a 
lot of new things - simply due to my "seniority" or whatever it may be 
called. That is - I am pleasantly surprised when I hear about something 
exceedingly cool, but do not expect it as a prerequisite.

What makes me tick obviously can not work for everyone. I should point 
out that in a general sense our current format is rather unwelcoming to 
someone with a family and a multitude other obligations. As it was 
correctly noted in one of the subthreads - talking about 
not-announced-in-advance stuff over pizza does not sound to appealing if 
you just came from 8 hours in the office. But before attempting to deal 
with this general problem, the current group needs to figure out if it 
*wants* to deal with it.

So what do you want your pm to be?

To summarize my personal pov - I find the group ok-ish as is, while at 
the same time I do not see obvious avenues for it to grow in its current 
state. With that said I am explicitly not opposed to any 
format/agenda/name/other changes, and for the group to pursue higher 
numbers, higher professionalism, or whathave you. The important point is 
that even if the current state of things has apparent leaders, I am 
definitely not one of them, nor does my schedule allow me to take a more 
active role in the future.

What do *you* think? :)