Newbies at the GUMs (Re: [wplug] LUG Ignorance)

[Zach Paine]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2002 at 07:12:05AM -0500, Kevin Olalde wrote:
> looked further for directions (I tried but @HOME was down), so didn't mind the
> reaction I got from those already present.  It was one like "What do mean hard
> to find, it was easy for us?".  I didn't want 'mingle' yet since I guessed the
> presentation was about to start.  Looking on the web page now, the "Details"
> given for the next LUG are missing.

Details for a GUM are only filled in when an announcement has been made.
The directions to the room however, are always available at the bottom
of the left hand bar.  Maybe I should change that.

> door and is on the look out for the group newbies.  My initial reaction to this
> was that it was overkill, I'm starting to rethink that position.  (She says they
> all were name tags too, I don't like name tags...)

We have on occasion worn name tags, but I don't know how important that
is.  As I said though, I think it is important that existing members put
in the effort to seek out newbies.

Your discussion of the post-talk groups is pretty reflective of what
usually happens at meetings, at least recently.  It's basically a free
for all and people just do whatever they want.  Some people like this
some people don't.  One thing we are working on is having more focused
discussion at meetings.  ie, there will be a talk on home automation
lets say, and then a group discussion regarding it.

> OK, so here are some suggestions.  Meetings need to be driven.  How tightly you
> grap the wheel is a different topic, but some direction and order needs to be
> instilled in order to have some amount of productivity.  If the meeting are more
> social in nature, that's cool.  Maybe announce at different points in the
> meeting what's happening next.

I agree that there needs to be more structure, even if a large part of
the meeting is simply social in nature.  I do think that the most recent
meeting (http://www.wplug.org/minutes.php?id=11) and installfest
(http://www.wplug.org/minutes.php?id=12) were more structured as this is
something the board is working on.  While there were some kinks to be worked out at the installfest, I think the
meeting went well.

> Maybe the meeting did come back together and I left too early, I certainly could
> have made more effort.  But I went away thinking the group was a bit disjointed
> and maybe I'll go to the next one that has a presentation that sounds
> interesting.

Well, here I see the problem.  I don't think that the meeting fell
apart because people formed groups and started talking about different
things.  The problem is you weren't welcomed into one of those groups,
and I think this is what we (at least I) should work on.  I hope to see
you at a meeting soon :)

	-Zach