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

[Jim Lynch]

I second the travel time problem.  The last meeting I made at GT, I left 
work in Peachtree City at 5pm and didn't have time to get anything to 
eat before the 730 meeting.  That was the second time that happened, so 
I quit going.  I really don't like to skip meals.  8)

Jim.
tfreeman at intel.digichem.net wrote:

>On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Dow_Hurst wrote:
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>>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...
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>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. 
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>>>What all do you need help with, what does it exactly involve?
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>>Getting folks who will do presentations.  Running the meetings.  That's 
>>pretty much it.
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>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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