[AnnArbor.pm] [A2PM] Interest in meetings?

[Michael Mol]

The reason you're getting private replies are because the mailing list
is configured to set reply-to to the original sender, not back to the
list.

I'm way out here by Grand Rapids, so I'm not likely to make it to A2PM
meetings, but I can offer some insight to meeting format transitions.

GRLUG once used a meeting == presentation format. It led to us having
meetings rarely; while we wanted to meet up, we didn't have any solid
presentation ideas. Some meeting plans would fizzle from a lack of
volunteers to speak.

Getting close to two years ago, we switched over to a weekly ad-hoc
arrangement. Someone (who I'll call the anchor) would go to some place
with wifi and {food and/or drink} and would be there for a solid
window of time. If anyone else wanted to show up, they'd know there'd
at least be the anchor there. Weekly attendance ranged from just me to
ten or twenty people. No set topic, just chatting about what we wanted
to and what we had in common.

No one location and time works for everyone, but for those who can
show up when/where someone decided to anchor, it's pretty fun. Earlier
this year, I stopped anchoring (I'd moved it to what turned out to be
a very bad spot, and attendance plummeted), someone else took it up,
moved it from Saturdays to Wednesday evenings, and it's been going
strong again. We've been seeing regular attendance from 10 to 20
people.

You'd have to figure out what works best for you guys, but this has
been working out pretty nicely for us. It becomes a social atmosphere
of technically-inclined people who listen to who they want to listen
to, talk about what they want to talk about, and have a coffee or beer
together. (Put that way, it sounds kinda like barcamp, but it's much
smaller, and there are no schedules.)

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Bryan Smith <besmit at umich.edu> wrote:
> I've received some private responses, so there is some interest.
> Based on how we've organized meetings in the past, someone needs to
> volunteer to present, or we need to start a public discussion (on the list)
> about an alternative format for the meetings. (In the past,  meetings =
> presentations.)
> Do we want to meetings to be less formal? (I.e., show up without an
> agenda?)
> Please send out your ideas to the list.
>
> Thanks,
> Bryan
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 9:32 AM, Bryan Smith <besmit at umich.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I've received an email asking about the group, and was wondering whether
>> there is any interest in starting meetings up again. Particularly, is anyone
>> interested in presenting anything?
>> Bryan
>
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>



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:wq