Sorry folks been busy so this has gone unanswered so far by the listkeepers.
First of all, we just hit 2000 members! That is a moving target though and it may take a week to stabilise over that figure. Also, Let me take the time to thank our Core group of members, the people that run the meetings and helped set up WSG in the early days. They do a heap of work in their own areas and keep a close eye on the list and it's many little trip-ups. Be nice to them, they're working hard for you and get nothing but my heartfelt thanks in return. Want to be a WSG core member? Start a meeting group! Which brings me back to the topic. Whenever I ask about setting up meetings (outside Australia) I get very little response, so I don't initiate anything any more. It's entirely up to you to start the process. So here's what you have to do. Log in to the members section of the WSG site and scroll down. Follow the link "City totals" http://webstandardsgroup.org/manage/login_view.cfm#totals Look for your city and those nearby. Remember, we generally have no idea about your geography (and whether Boston and Cambridge MA are close enough to each other for example). You may want to scroll up and look in the list above that as that may be easier to see everyone in your area. Side note: This is why we ask you to be general about your area/city in your login details... Good time to check what others in your area have done and change yours to the most common format, London people I particularly mean you. The list is sorted by Country, State, City. If there are more than 8 people near you, you have a chance (and by no means a guarantee) of setting up a regular meeting. We actually find 20 is about the right number. See suggested list below. Let Russ and I know on info@webboy.net that YOU are interested in being a group organiser, and that you have some ideas about a venue (preferably free, with internet access and a projector), and what other cities in the list are in close proximity and we will contact (BCC) the members in those areas directly asking if they are interested and if we can give their address to YOU the proposed organiser. You will probably need to have two organisers so the second may also come out of that list. In Australia, Russ and I (and sometimes John Allsopp) try very hard to make an appearance at the first meeting to help out (as we are doing in Perth this month and hopefully very soon in Canberra) but off-shore it's a little difficult. We will try our best to help. We have had some interest in Austin TX and Sacramento CA but nothing has come of them yet (we need to give Sacramento more time though, it was very recent). Here's what I think are worth looking at (and again there may be well more in these areas listed under different suburb names etc.): 42 - London England - UK (Really no excuses here! Someone?) 31 - Perth WA - Australia (22nd June! Just 11 sleeps now... AND a weekend for me in Margaret River) 25 - Canberra ACT - Australia (working on it and will probably be daytime meetings for Gov audience) 18 - Chicago IL - USA 16 - San Francisco CA - USA 15 - Toronto Ontario - Canada (Come on Toronto... Beat the USA to the 1st Nth American meeting) 14 - New York NY - USA (and there are more if you take in Brooklyn etc.) 13 - Copenhagen - Denmark 13 - Brighton East Sussex - UK 12 - Adelaide SA - Australia 12 - Dallas TX - USA 11 - Auckland - New Zealand 11 - Washington DC/VA/MD - USA 10 - Chennai Tamil Nadu - India 10 - Boston MA - USA 10 - Portland OR - USA 10 - Sacramento CA - USA (working on it) 10 - Seattle WA - USA 9 - Manchester Lancashire - UK 9 - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil 8 - Vancouver British Columbia - Canada 8 - Stockholm - Sweden 8 - Houston TX - USA 8 - Los Angeles CA - USA 8 - Philadelphia PA - USA I don't believe you can pull it off at all with less than 8 but check the list, I may have missed something obvious. On the question of video... It takes a lot of time to edit a presentation (to get screenshots in etc) and then a lot of bandwidth to serve them up. For live streaming, you'll need good bandwidth at the venue. We don't have that luxury. There is also the issue of IP for the presenter (though I think that most would probably agree to it), and then there is accessibility, transcriptions etc. as previously mentioned on the list. I would estimate 4-8 hours to produce a 40 min presentation (without captions) that would end up at 160-400mb. I really don't have time so I'm afraid that without significant corporate sponsorship to hire someone or someone else doing it voluntarily, this isn't likely (at least for Sydney). Other cities may prove me wrong, I know our very competitive friends in Brisbane were looking into it. Peter ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
