[aclug-L] Re: ACLUG

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Don't really have time to go another round on this, but I do want to get
a couple more things out. The main one is that I had been thinking of
meetings as presentations/lectures, which is of course not the only way
to think of them. I think it was Bruce Alderman who suggested that they
should really be meetings, which involve a lot more give-and-take among
participants, rather than presenter-giving/audience-taking. The fact is,
there are lots of different kinds of get-togethers, each with its own
set of goals, expectations, requirements, etc., but the real important
thing is to recognize which one you're trying to do, and do a better job
of it than we've been seeing.

Just to spell this out a bit, presentations in order to be successful
have to be good, which is hard to do, so one thing that implies is to
do them less frequently (I suggested monthly, which actually seems to
be the norm for LUGs AFAIK). Meetings are not so hard, and probably
benefit from greater frequency (up to a point). On the other hand, one
thing you need with a meeting is someone who can keep the ball rolling.
Also, meetings with more than about six people tend to dehomogenize --
separate into active and passive people, and you need someone who can
stir that up every now and then.

Another thing I was thinking of (without really getting into it) was
bringing in guest lecturers. That might be a separate effort, and
might be something WSU affiliation could fund.

Dale W Hodge wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: discussion-bounce@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:discussion-bounce@xxxxxxxxx]On
> > Behalf Of Tom Hull
> 
> > Better to adjust the format so you don't need to find another Goerzen,
> > than just hang onto a format that isn't working.
> 
> But what would that format look like?

Could be no Q&A period. Could require Q to be submitted ahead of time,
so someone could have Q already parsed and A in hand.

> We've also talked about having a new user group and an advanced group. But 
> we've
> always felt there wasn't enough 'help' to go around.

I've never liked this idea. For one thing, new users need experts to guide
them; for another, nobody's an expert in everything.

Also, I'm more concerned about attracting relative experts than newbies,
because they raise the quality and value of the whole group.

> > > I would favor 1 topic meeting and 1 "social" meeting.
> >
> > I don't know what you mean by a "social" meeting. There could be
> > different types of meetings/events, especially if one need not get
> > involved in all of them.
> 
> By social meeting, I mean something like our "pizza parties".  Where a group 
> of
> us get together and talk over whatever.

I've been to a couple of "pizza parties" -- I think they might work
better if they could break up into smaller groups, maybe have theme
tables and let people wander where they want. I don't think this is
easy at a commercial restaurant, but pizza transports well.

> Most presentations only run an hour anyway. We could do announcements last, 
> but
> then no one would stay to hear them. :-)

Announcements should be at the beginning, but they need to be worked
ahead of time and kept short and sweet. If you need to thrash them
out democratically, do that on-line, ahead of time (or schedule a
"town hall meeting").

> > Maybe different mailers handle this differently, but if I want to
> > reply to a post privately (which I sometimes do), setting reply-to
> > to the list means I have to retype the sender's address. Doing it
> > the other way around means all I have to do is choose between my
> > "Reply" and "Reply All" buttons (then delete the sender, but that's
> > easier than typing the sender in).
> 
> Yeah, but I would bet that most people would just hit the reply button and 
> we'd
> never see the information on the list.

Then (if it matters) they'll have to resend; eventually they'll learn.

> > If you don't do this, as the list grows we all get swamped with
> > useless replies, and/or people don't bother to respond for fear
> > of burdening the list (which you receive back, and gets logged)
> > where an easy private reply would be done. Trying to force all
> > replies back to the list is wasteful and/or a nuisance. Almost
> > all of the mail lists that I subscribe to work that way. This
> > leaves it up to the individual to decide whether any give post
> > is of interest to the list, which is the way it should be.
> 
> I've seen it done both ways, and I don't have a problem with either. In many
> ways I prefer it this way. Otherwise a lot of discussions would likely end up
> off list.

You want the low-grade, non-general-interest discussions off list.

-- 
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 *  Tom Hull * thull at kscable.com * http://www.tomhull.com/
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