----- Original Message ----- From: "Indranil Das Gupta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 6:49 PM Subject: [ilug-cal] [LONG/IMP] Seminar at HIT and other pertinent issues
Hi all, 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. >> and something that was more in line with the syllabi that was followed by the students. so as it stands now, on hindsight it is more apt to term it as a seminar. semantics aside, considering the short time in which it was organised, the convener did a good nay excellent job of it all. looks like tathagata is capable of spotting talents !! 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; >> or worse ending up delivering too little. 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) >> lack of coordination - is that what you seem to be saying ? it can cause some problems, at COMPASS too there were a few wrinkles on this account. [snipped as needed] 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. >> there is always a give and take, what is important is maximising the gains while minimising the losses for the LUG 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. >> if not all then the LUG coordinator should be kept in the loop. speaks ill when even he does not possess all information. Things that went right --------------------- [snipped 'cause the points are pertinent and i do not disagree with them] 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. >> there is talent and ability within us, it took Tathagata to point that out. and it is a good thing also,the more people get involved in organisational matters, the better it is. 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. >> very important so that the floaters can safely float out instead of fidgeting uneasily [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 . >> again needed so as to handle the onsite queries [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. >> ahem your 2p just ended up like $2 given the size of the text mail ;-) sm --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.459 / Virus Database: 258 - Release Date: 2/25/03 -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
