[Phoenix-pm] Meeting room possibilities...

Brock awwaiid at thelackthereof.org
Mon Oct 24 23:01:08 PDT 2005


On 2005.10.21.12.00, Scott Walters wrote:
| 9. http://www.azontherocks.com -- how does Phoenix.PM feel about
| having a rock-climbing social meeting? $20 gets you a gear rental
| and a day pass, and they show you the ropes (har har har) too. 
| If we get about 8 people or so who want to do this, we can book
| it as a party and save even more money. 

I've never been rock-climbing, but would be happy to try. You organize
it and count me in :)

| > 1. Most public libraries have meeting rooms, but they apparently
| > charge for use, so depending on how flush we're feeling, this is
| > a possibility.
| 
| They did downtown Scottsdale's library recently, I think. I missed that one.

It worked out really well but costs $30 per session. If someone else
wants to donate some $$ then we can go back there (other libraries offer
similar deals at similar prices. They are much cheaper for official
nonprofits, but The Perl Foundation didn't respond to my inquiries about
us falling under them. I have a nonprofit of my own, but the paperwork
hasn't gone through yet).

| > 3. ASU's library has study rooms, but I don't know how large they are. The library has never asked me for ID, but that may just be my professorial (ie. unkempt) appearance.
| 
| They're pretty small for our requirements. A coffee shop near campus, or 
| the student union, might be options.

Ya.

| > 4. When I lived in an apartment, the apartment complex had a common room available at no charge, large enough for a good-size gathering, with some restrictions. But after 7 PM, the gate was closed and you had to buzz for admittance, a minor annoyance.
| 
| Too unprofessional, IMO. I'd sooner have everyone to the house ;)

I agree.

| > 5. When I lived in Silicon Valley, one of the Carls Jrs had a meeting room that they regularly made available to groups for meetings. Perhaps one or more fast food/restaurants would help out on their slow nights, if approached properly.
| 
| We recently did Nello's Pizza in North Scottsdale. The turn-out was great,
| but Nellos had a few other large parties the same night at the same time, 
| so we wound up waiting to be seated for a long time. That was just rotten
| timing. And they don't take reservations, either.
| 
| There's a downtown Scottsdale Nello's now too, by the way.
| 
| One of the reasons I suggested Nello's before was their good beer selection,
| with local micros on tap and about 20 beers in the cooler, but there are
| apparently surprisingly few beer drinkers in Phoenix.PM.

Carl's Jrs had meeting rooms? How weird. We will return to Nellos or
similar before I miss a monthly meeting again, I promise. But for
presentations and discussions everyone can hear it is a bit difficult in
that sort of environment.

| > 6. I have no idea about how or how well the technology works, but would NetMeeting or something like it allow us to hold a virtual meeting ? If not, is there an entrepreneurial^H^H...^H^H, money-making possibility here, or an open source solution waiting for completion/contributions ?
| 
| We're dabbling with doing audio recordings (should set up proper podcast
| feeds eventually) and I'm talking about doing video as well. There are a
| lot of Linux users in the group (looks pretty fifty-fifty between Linux
| and Windows), so if you say NetMeeting, you should probably say NetMeeting/
| GnomeMeeting ;)
| 
| We did have an IRC "virtual" meeting once, and turn-out was poor. 

Yeah... thats what perlmonks is for! More or less. I think that at this
point I've worked out the technology for audio and screen-capture-video
recordings to go up after a meeting (had a glich in the last one that
kept it from working, but figured it out now).

| > 7. If we were in some way allied with some other group, perhaps we could piggyback on their already-reserved space. Broadening the charter to combine with the PHP group that meets at Walt's TV (already a sizable group) might cross-pollinate both groups, altho that may have already happened. There was a Python group, but they seem to have disbanded/died. Perhaps they could be included. And maybe start a Ruby group, just for the extra weight on the letterhead.
| 
| I don't want to redefine the group as being a splinter of another group (PLUG had also
| been suggested in the past), but I've been advocating coinciding meetings with other
| groups for just this effect -- cross-pollination. 

The PLUG (http://plug.phoenix.az.us/) Developers meeting is Thursday
November 3rd! Once again I plan on going... though I planned on going
for the last three months and haven't yet. AzPHP (http://azphp.org) is
tomorrow night. Any other cool developer-oriented meetings in the
valley? PLUG-DEV invites us to do perl presentations, they are getting
tired of java people dominating their discussions :)

--Brock



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