Hi all,
There is a jolly good round of flamefest going on at our website w.r.t whether
this Saturday was a meeting or a lecture/demostration with HIT as the intended
beneficiary. The principal objecter Ranjabati Sen has made a few pertinent
points which are rather hard to argue/wish away. But as always in situations
like this there will be both points for and against.
Firstly, going by what transpired at HIT on 8th, it definitely looked like a
seminar for the benefit of HIT students. Anirban Dutta (CSE lecturer with HIT)
clearly spoke of it as "The Seminar". The HIT students were told at couple of
occasions to "keep quite!" ;-) The informal feedback I recieved from few other
HIT teaching staff was that they were disappointed with the seminar. They had
clearly **expected** a more comprehensive session/format.
Linux Advocacy is **great**! and its also true we can't please everyone at all
times. But failing in general to live up to common expectations is *not* OK!
This can happen when:
[a] we do a bad job on stage; and/or
[b] we raise the expectations of the people concerned by promising too much and
not delivering; and/or
[c] people come to the event with unrealistic expectations of their own (here we
are guilty of not explaining to them **prior** to the event that WYSIWYG
clearly)
I consider "c" to be the most dangerous... since unrealistic RoE (returns on
expectations) causes most damage to the movement we represent. Probably it was a
combination of all three that happened this Saturday at HIT.
I don't yet know exactly what was commited to HIT people, I was not in the loop
when all this was being planned out. However, there is nothing surprising here.
I have personally met with a few institutions post-COMPASS who are willing to
help the LUG in terms of venue and facilities in return of the LUG helping their
students gain exposure to Linux.
In general wat they want is the LUG to hold "seminars" for their students, in
return they are willing to let the LUG use their facilities. There is nothing
wrong per se with this quid-pro-quo approach, as long as their
objectives/expectations are not in collision course with the LUG's. But this
isn't always the case.
Therefore it goes without saying that the members who are taking initiative to
organise the meetings/seminars in future, **must** without fail notify all the
members of the circumstances in advance and specially the speakers should be
able to pull their act together and up a few notches in such cases.
Things that went right
---------------------
Infrastructural facilities were quite excellent, barring the fact that there was
not a single goddam loo in the building! ;-)
Lets remember we were really a backwaters LUG before COMPASS 2003 came along in
terms of.activities. The seminar was a *fair* effort considering the short time
in which it was organised, with active participation of so few members in
putting the seminar together. All credits to them.
We may have missed on a meeting, but IMO we have actually made real some headway
towards our Linux OutReach program however unintended it was. The seminar
definitely showed up the short-comings we need to iron out. Much good in that
too!
We all expect more of the same effort from them in future. This is precisely
what I meant when I had posted post-COMPASS that the future of the LUG is in
safe hands, and we no longer are a LUG with a single point of failure.
The most common complaint levelled upto now abt the way this LUG functioned was
that far too much was dependant on a single individual (i.e. /me). This is
precisely the reason for my conspicious absence on the list prior to this
Saturday. I wanted to ensure the young ones begin to assume roles of
responsibility with confidence & assurance.
Things that went wrong
-----------------------
Several things that went wrong on Saturday and this should be fixed while
holding future seminar/meetings like this
[a] A shifting time-line. IIRC, it was posted on the list that the venue had to
be vacated by 6:30 PM. While awaiting transportation to HIT, we were informed
abt the curfew time being 6 PM. When we got to HIT, it was revised to 5:30 and
ultimately it can down to 5 o'clock.
Organizers (both LUG as well as venue/event hosts) should try to be very clear
abt the time limits and these should be communicated clearly to all LUG members
as well as participating audience, with no scope for ambiguity.
[b] The organisers should be clear abt the hardware to used. As it happened on
Saturday, one of the machines supplied by HIT had a i845glly motherboard. It was
sheer devaju of COMPASS. When Anindya asked me for the GLLY patch to get X
running, I was not able to help out despite having the patch at home.
MUST-DO : Make sure of the hardware compatibility when it is not our own prior
to the event as far as possible. That or Russian Roulette! I'll choose Russian
Roulette anyday! ;-)
[c] a certain number of clearly demarcated seats reserved for LUG members. Some
efforts were made towards this during the meeting but it was entirely ad-hoc.
Not only it will reduce confusion, it will also allow for accounting for the
members present.
FWIW, during the RMS lecture I had to clearly asked JU for ~15 seats, which is
what we all ended up sitting together, and not spread all across the auditorium.
[d] Managing the meeting -- this should be done, ensuring proper introduction of
speakers and topics. In case, its a seminar at some non-LUG venue, general
protocol demands that a senior person from the venue/event host to be nominated
as the event chair. In case of the LUG event it should be someone from the LUG.
RECOMMENDED: Names of Topics and Speakers/Duration/Intended Audience should be
put on a slide and displayed while the meeting chair is speaking on the event.
[e] One or two members from the LUG should be identified and introduced to the
assembled people for all queries w.r.t LUG membership and this person(s)
should be in charge of gathering the e-mail IDs for subscription .
[f] Those approaching the designated LUG registrars for the event, should be
told :
i> how to subscribe to the list on their own;
ii> that they can leave their email address for automatic registration;
iii> how to contact the listadmin in case they are not being able to get on
the list on their own or facing any other problem.
For both <i> & <ii> Give them a brief spiel abt list policy and abt reading the
FAQ and the Welcome msg before posting.
STRONGLY RECOMMENDED: The new would-be members should be asked for alternate
e-mail address as well. Often the given email address has problem and leaves the
listadmin with little option while subscribing the new member to the list.
[g] The LUG member in charge of managing the seminar should make it a point to
introduce the significant members of the venue/event host to the assembled LUG
members. This is required both as a sake of courtesy as well as makes for good
sense. Aside from Prof Ghosh (who incidentally is Academic Advisor, HIT) who
addressed the assembled audience, other key HIT persons were not introduced. And
even Prof Ghosh was introduced without any mention to his designation.
SUGGESTED : We should consciously guard against protocol oversights like this in
future.
[h] As pointed out by Ranjabati's post on the website, the seminar didn't have a
formal ending as it was rather haphazard towards the end. There was also no
official vote of thanks. There may look to be small issues, but they make a bad
impression on people, special to venue/event hosts. This should be rectified in
future.
The missteps and oversights which happened were IMHO mostly due to a lack of
experience. We need to get the mix of experience and enthusiasm right on this
one! We are supposed to learn from our mistakes, lets hope the experience at HIT
leaves us richer.
just my 2p ;-)
--indra.
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