[Van-pm] Tech Meeting, 12th March 2009 @ Sophos

Michael R. Wolf MichaelRWolf at att.net
Fri Feb 20 16:32:39 PST 2009


On Feb 20, 2009, at 4:11 PM, Scott McWhirter wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> Thanks to all who made it to the February meeting and I hope that you
> enjoyed it.
>

[...]

> If anyone else has anything they would like to talk on, even if it's
> just a 5 minute "Lightning Talk", please let me know.
>
> Let the discussion ensue!


Here at SPUG (Seattle Perl User Group), we had good luck in December  
with a bunch of lightening talks.  I'm a  big proponent of them.  I  
think it helps lower the bar to entry for sharing one's expertise.   
It's a good cost/benefit trade off.  For very little investment, a  
"speaker" can share a lot of knowledge with a lot of people.  (I put  
"speaker" in quotes because the term scares lots of folks, so I don't  
like using it.)  The extra effort to make a polished "keynote speech"  
is often not worth it, and raises the commitment level so high that  
good works are often excluded from the discussion.

Additionally, I think it's good for the "community" to know more about  
what each of the members are good at.  For a given member to make one  
(or zero) talks every few years isn't as good at spreading that as a  
micro-talk every few months.

At this weeks' SPUG meeting, I spoke out in favor of some more  
lightening talks.  Given that "next month (and the month after that,  
and May and June, and even beyond)" are "open" for speakers we're  
always looking for "cheap" ways to generate good content.   (Yes, I am  
making fun of how the moderator phrased "we have no upcoming  
speakers"!  It was funny...)  I'm a firm believer that the majority of  
the good ideas at most events are in the ideas of the folks sitting in  
the seats.  And I'm looking for ways to structure meetings to make it  
easy to share that knowledge, and therefore worthwhile for others to  
attend.

Glad to hear the good news from up north.

Enjoy,
Michael

P.S.  Anyone interested in redoing a good Vancouver talk in Seattle is  
always welcome.  (Anyone interested in polishing their OSCON talk?)   
Heck, you're welcome even without a talk.  Just show up, listen, and  
trade stories in the back of the room.


-- 
Michael R. Wolf
     All mammals learn by playing!
         MichaelRWolf at att.net






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