[Jax.PM] Meetings

[Aaron Johnson]

On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 11:08, WC Jones wrote:
> [a jax.PM member posting]
> 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?

I like the basic plan. Lets keep this meeting as simple and adjustable
as possible.  Do you really think vendors will be interested in such a
small meeting?

I will put a message out to the Gainesville PM as well to see if anyone
there would be interested in attending.  If we get enough interest (4
people :) we might be able to arrange to meet in Strake or some other
middle ground.


Aaron

> -Sx- :)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Jacksonville-pm mailing list
> Jacksonville-pm at mail.pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/jacksonville-pm
> 
>