[Phoenix-pm] Meeting today, wed june 6, 2007 @ 7:00pm Mill's End

Darrin Chandler dwchandler at stilyagin.com
Wed Jun 6 18:06:55 PDT 2007


On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 03:51:15PM -0700, Scott Walters wrote:
> We get a lot of first time visitors who never return.  Perhaps they
> think that something wonderful (other than Perl knowhow) will be
> imparted on them during the meeting that will radically advance their
> career (without having to sharpen their Perl skills).  Sometimes
> they come out for the presentations, but the presentations have to
> be pretty damn good to build up a following, and that's hard to
> sustain.

This sounds familiar...

> Other groups in the valley related to Web tech or programming draw a lot 
> more people, a lot more and more serious speakers, are better places
> for making connections, and better have their fingers on the pulse of
> emerging technologies.

Having attended a few meetings here and there, I can also say that some
groups have horrid presentations, don't have their fingers on any pulse
at all, and *still* manage to draw decent numbers because they're
focused on something that's currently in the limelight.

> We should all stop being such a specialized spliter group and start
> going to REFRESH Phoenix, the Ruby User's Group, PLUG, and whatever
> else.  When people are far more interested in tech, applications of
> tech, their careers and career prospects, and making connections
> with other programmers, it's irrelavent whether the meeting has a 
> Perl theme or not.

This is something I've discussed off and on with Hans (of PLUG fame).
The Valley has a LOT of groups that SHOULD have some synergy. There are
so many meetings going on that I've had to perform some triage, and the
result is that I haven't made it to Phoenix.pm (and several other groups
of note, and then a dozen more of at least some interest). From talking
to others, I know I'm not alone here.

Consider keeping Phoenix.pm alive. Consider "co-branding" events with
other groups such as PLUG, PhxBUG, and LOPSA. We have some Perl people,
and you have some BSD, Linux, and sysadmin people. There's a lot of
crossover. Not long ago, I gave a presentation on writing daemons at the
PLUG-Developers meeting. Now, I haven't actually used Linux in a while
and haven't written any daemons for Linux in much longer. So my
presentation was using BSD. It really didn't matter. People showed up.

Something to think about, anyway.

> I suggest, however, keeping the mailing list.  That's about the
> degree that area Perl developers really need to keep in touch with
> each other.  And that might push us to move to a more virtual
> existance, fixing up the Website, getting blog aggregation going,
> and maybe some maps, or a database of employers -- the sorts of
> things people might actually use.

In addition, Hans has renamed the GNU/Linux Stammtisch to, er, I forget
exactly, but it's something like the Free Software Stammtisch. I think I
may have had something to do with that. Anyway... this makes a handy
social event, and everyone is invited. If even BSD people are welcome,
Perlers would be doubly so. There's no structure, many or most bring
laptops, and nobody would object if a hacking session happened.

-- 
Darrin Chandler            |  Phoenix BSD User Group  |  MetaBUG
dwchandler at stilyagin.com   |  http://phxbug.org/      |  http://metabug.org/
http://www.stilyagin.com/  |  Daemons in the Desert   |  Global BUG Federation


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