[ale] ALE NW meetings are postponed until we locate a new site

[tfreeman at intel.digichem.net]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Dow_Hurst wrote:

> Do you think Google and the Web in general are reducing the need people 
> feel for getting together in a "geek" meeting?  Or, is it a "fast paced" 
> life with long work hours the real culprit?  I remember my Dad taking me 
> to a Atlanta computer users meeting back when the TRS80 and such era 
> machines were popular.  There were a lot of people there at the time.  
> Much later I went to my first ALE meeting at GaTech and it was a full 
> auditorium all about Linux.  At least 100 people or more were there.  
> Now, the meetings seem much sparser and we have three at least trying to 
> keep going.  Maybe a single meeting in Atlanta with stronger 
> presentations would be back in order?  Convenience can sometimes be 
> misinterpreted unconsciously to mean less important.  Maybe if everyone 
> had to work harder to make it to the meetings, they would become more 
> valuable.  Just a thought.  I'm out of the loop anyway now...
<<snip>> 
It isn't _just_ ALE or user groups alone. An awful lot of people are 
working long hours (as noted), travel times seem to keep getting worse 
(IMHO), "security" constraints at job sites seem to discourage employers 
from supporting their employees getting to know other people with similar 
interests, liability concerns limit other organizations' interest in 
providing meeting space. Plus a number of us _are_ getting older, which 
makes a nice quiet evening at home a lot more attractive also. 

> > 
> > What all do you need help with, what does it exactly involve?
> 
> Getting folks who will do presentations.  Running the meetings.  That's 
> pretty much it.

Getting that first part, tho, can require two parts persistence, three 
parts networking, and an increadable amount of dumb luck to glue it all 
together in a timely fashion. I just came off a year as program chair for 
a different organization, and I'm whipped. Probably wind up doing it again 
in the near future tho.

> 
> 

-- 
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If you think Education is expensive
Try Ignorance
                   Author Unknown
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