SPUG: not quite random thoughts on the current crop of user groups

Hartman, Karl B karl.b.hartman at boeing.com
Mon Aug 25 10:55:47 CDT 2003


Personally, I prefer them on weekdays.  But maybe not every week. 

Dan,
Dim Sum location:
Sun-Ya Restaurant
605 7th S SEATTLE, WA 98104-2907

No Dim Sum, not fancy, but good restaurant.  My wife Ling and my favorite restaurant in Seattle.  
Hing Loon Restaurant
628 S Weller Seattle, WA 98104

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to call.

Thanks,

Karl Hartman
>SSG Client/Server Operations - Computing Admin Process Mgmt
425-294-8172 (office) 

Business Sense
"Failure to embrace an idea just because it doesn't make sense or
just plain doesn't work does not constitute resistance to change"

Common Sense - from "Really important stuff my kids taught me"
"If you want to zoom down the expert slope tomorrow, you have
 to fall down the bunny slope today."



-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Hatch [mailto:spug-list at l.ifokr.org] 
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 9:58 PM
To: Fred Morris
Cc: spug-list at mail.pm.org; Tim Maher/CONSULTIX
Subject: Re: SPUG: not quite random thoughts on the current crop of user groups




> As for the OpenSauce lunches, am
> I mistaken or haven't most of them taken place on weekdays?

Schedule one and they will come.

I've arranged two (one coming up Monday at Rosita's in Ballard) and they were during the week because on the weekend I am exclusively a daddy, and my 3 year old isn't interested in a bunch of geeks.

If you want to have one on a weekend, announce it and it exists! That's all there is to it!

> and I can't argue with your assertion that you're having fun, I just 
> wonder about what I sense is a certain desperation in it.

I go because, as a telecommuter, I seldom see anyone outside the GSLUG meeting and my daughter's day care.  That probably qualifies as 'desperation for human contact.'  Not sure what you're insinuating though.  Doesn't seem like anyone else has any desperation aspects to it.  Just hanging out with geeks and having food.

> And then
> there's the dynamic of all of the copycat lunches, and that's the 
> charismatic model that I was speaking to: that Tim does it, and then a 
> whole bunch of people do it, and it's not really coordinated.

I don't see any problem with that.  The first was when Tim and I were going to get together anyway and opened it up to anyone interested.  Guess that was pretty evil of us.

> A lot of that
> effort is destined to fail, and is wasted... for my definition of 
> "wasted", of course.

> (PS, King Street Cafe is much better, foodwise than HoH. But none of 
> it holds a candle to a real Dim Sum Palace in SF.)

Then schedule one.  You'll probably do better getting SPUGgers if you have it north of California.

> I guess maybe it's me. Yeah, it's me. But I think again you hit it on 
> the head, Tim does something, so other people do something, and 
> without a broader organizational structure a lot of these things don't 
> end up having much staying power. The failure of the charismatic model 
> is that there is a very limited amount of Tim to go around. Maybe 
> people are hoping technology will come to the rescue in the form of 
> Wikis and whatnot, and I don't know how well that will fare.

So what's your suggestion?  No one should do anything because if someone does something then it's destined to fail.  Got it.



--
Brian Hatch                  Bri:  I need a nap.
   Systems and               Josh: I understand.
   Security Engineer               Do you need
http://www.ifokr.org/bri/          a bottle?

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