<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">This came up in a London PM mail thread; there might be some good ideas we can borrow. If anyone has comments or suggestions then feel free to shout them out to the list.<div><br></div><div>Mike<br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">Ovid <<a href="mailto:publiustemp-londonpm@yahoo.com">publiustemp-londonpm@yahoo.com</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">February 17, 2010 8:19:23 AM EST<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">"London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <<a href="mailto:london.pm@london.pm.org">london.pm@london.pm.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>Re: Founding a Perlmongers group</b><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Reply-To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><a href="mailto:publiustemp-londonpm@yahoo.com">publiustemp-londonpm@yahoo.com</a>, "London.pm Perl M\[ou\]ngers" <<a href="mailto:london.pm@london.pm.org">london.pm@london.pm.org</a>><br></span></div><br><div>--- On Mon, 15/2/10, James Laver <<a href="mailto:james.laver@gmail.com">james.laver@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">From: James Laver <<a href="mailto:james.laver@gmail.com">james.laver@gmail.com</a>><br></blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite">As I shall shortly be leaving london<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">for somewhere with no PM group, I<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">thought it might be nice to create one.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">How do I go about it?<br></blockquote><br>I rebuilt portland.pm from scratch. We had a "group", but they hadn't met in over a year and when I took over, I made a few mistakes. However, it's now one of the strongest, most active groups in the world. Here's what I and my successors did:<br><br>1. Never miss holding a meeting. Ever. If you don't have a technical, have a social. We had technicals followed by socials.<br><br>2. Try to arrange to have chromatic, Allison Randal, Schwern, Ingy, Randal Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, Ward Cunningham, and Jeff Zucker move to your city. It makes for fantastic presentations.<br><br>3. If the above people live in your city, encourage them to leave. Other people wind up being too intimidated to give presentations. That's a hell of an audience if you're showing off your thalidomide-baby Perl. Fortunately, they were also a very respectful audience.<br><br>4. If the above people live in your city, encourage one of them to not show up falling down drunk at a technical meeting. The comedic value is astonishingly short-lived. [1]<br><br>5. Coordinate with other user groups in the area for cross-disciple presentations. Don't get into language wars with them. Respect means a lot.<br><br>42. Always know where your towel is. Towel is a euphemism for "projector". Crowding around someone's laptop makes for a lousy presentation. Make sure this towel works with your laptop.<br><br>6. Always have a back up presenter. Randal was great for this and he saved my @$$ more than once.<br><br>7. Always have a back up *presentation*. Staying up late the night before to write one because your presenter dropped out is no fun.<br><br>8. If there are local companies which use Perl, see if they'll donate meeting space. If they do, they'll often have towels.<br><br>9. Try to get the presentation sent to you beforehand and make sure you can display it on your laptop in case your towel doesn't plug into their laptop.<br><br>10. Make sure that some presentations appeal to newer programmers. This was one of our biggest weaknesses at portland.pm (I don't know about now).<br><br>11. Try to make sure your group leader is named Joshua. It helps, really.<br><br>12. Open up every meeting with an amusing video. People really like this.<br><br>Cheers,<br>Ovid<br><br>[1]. Don't email me offlist and ask who this is. I'm not telling. Period.<br><br>--<br>Buy the book - <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/">http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/</a><br>Tech blog - <a href="http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/">http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/</a><br>Twitter - <a href="http://twitter.com/OvidPerl">http://twitter.com/OvidPerl</a><br>Official Perl 6 Wiki - <a href="http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6">http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6</a><br><br><br></div></blockquote></div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-- </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Mike Stok <<a href="mailto:mike@stok.ca">mike@stok.ca</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.stok.ca/~mike/">http://www.stok.ca/~mike/</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply.</div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span>
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