[Jax.PM] Meetings

[WC Jones (Bill)]

On Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 09:59  AM, Aaron Johnson wrote:
> I would like to organize a meeting.  If you think you can attend a
> meeting please indicate where you are located and how far you would be
> willing to travel for the meeting.  Include a suggestion for a topic if
> you have one in mind.
>
> I am in Ocala and would be willing to drive ~100 miles (~200 round 
> trip)
> for a meeting.


Wow, that is somewhat a long drive.  About 2 hours on the road for 
about, what, an hour or so meeting?

While I am not trying to discourage you, I do want to keep things 
in perspective.  Jax.PM has been around for 4+ years and, other 
than the meeting at YAPC and the ten or so Jax LUG meetings I 
attended, there simply has never been a lot of people that would 
lend itself to an organized meet and greet.

Most of my involvements within Jacksonville over the last 8 years 
have dealt with education and awareness surrounding Unix/Linux/Open 
Source, of both myself and others.

In that venue I feel we could meet quarterly to have a "membership" 
drive and at that time hold either a "Open Source' science fair or 
maybe a programming contest.  My contacts at ORA would be more than 
happy to provide prizes (and if they do not I feel confident I can 
get local community and business involvement to raise funds for 
such a quarterly (or at least annual) local meeting.)

I know that J will catch the :other than Perl: open source air of 
the event/meeting.  My thoughts are we can see, initially, if there 
is enough local interests in Perl.  But I am afraid, based upon my 
own research over the last two years, that such a meeting based 
simply on Perl we would find ourselves to be quite alone.

In the last two years, from the four major book sellers (this 
includes FCCJ), less than 500 Perl-centric books were sold 
(probably 90% of those were ORA books; plus I must say about 200 of 
those were students whom I "strongly advised" into purchasing more 
books.)  So, assuming overlap, and reselling issues, I would 
venture there are about 100-200 people in the Jacksonville area 
that are NOT yet members.

Maybe they don't want to be members.  Maybe they don't know about 
the group.  I know the students I taught know about it.  None of 
them, if I am not missing anyone, are members to my knowledge.

I do not wish to end this on a sour note, so allow me to cast the 
first suggestion out for discussion:

We plan to meet in May (it would take that long for me to get 
anything of interest from vendors) -  We could plan a simple

#!perl -w
print "Hello Jax!";

With introductions to Perl, Perl in general, our group, and some 
demonstrations about Perl.  The whole "presentation" would last at 
the most 2 hours -- maybe four if there is a "lot" of interest.

What do you think about that?
-Sx- :)