ALE and Newbies and such

[Eric Lorenzo]

There's something that I think needs to be brought up and taken into
consideration by the ALE organizers.  I've discussed this with one of
said organizers, and he suggested that I post publicly, so here it is.

Nearly every computer-related 'user group' or 'enthusiast' meeting I've
been to has suffered, to some degree, from the fact that it is led by a
small clique of people who, well, just aren't very outgoing.  There's a
strong tendancy for these people to make inside jokes and comments that
are directed at (and only understood by) other members of this clique.
Usually, the result is that those who aren't members learn nothing, and
lose interest in the subject at hand.  Of course, this isn't the intent
of the leaders, it's simply a result of their personalities (geeky - and
I don't exclude myself from that label), which is in turn a result of
the subject matter.  One example of the sort of thing I'm referring to
can be found at the recent Atlanta Unix User's Group metting, which was
devoted to Linux.  At one point someone mentioned something called WINE,
but never explained what it was.  I and many other people here probably
know that WINE is a WINdows Emulator that is being developed to run
under Linux.  But many people at the meeting probably didn't, and they
were left in the dark.  I could name plenty of other examples, but if I
did, I'd end up just pointing fingers, and that's not what I want to do.
On the other hand, I've seen a few meetings that went quite well.  The
best example I can think of is the "Intro to Linux" meeting held earlier
this quarter by Vernard.  (It was this meeting that finally spurred me to
install Linux.)

I would much rather see the average ALE meeting go more like Vernard's
meeting than like the AUUG meeting.  I think that some of the ALE
organizers have probably already considered the things I'm talking
about individually, but I think that it needs to be brought out in
the open.  There needs to be a conscious effort on the part of the
leaders to avoid assuming that the audience knows the things they
do and thinks the way they do.

Eric Lorenzo