On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 2:04 AM Ben Koenig <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 1/10/21 12:48 PM, Tomas Kuchta wrote: > > I agreed with Russell - we all know about regular monthly meetings for at > > least a decade. Thanks to Michael mainly. > > > That is not an acceptable excuse by any stretch of the imagination. You > are flat out refusing to show any acceptance whatsoever for people who > are new or not as active. The lack of empathy on your end is mind boggling.
I am speaking only for myself, not in any official capacity, in case that wasn't clear. My remark was (mostly) a joke. We (collectively, as volunteers) try. Sometimes we fail. When we fail, because we care, we try to do better the next time. When I first decided to start coming to PLUG meetings it took me three months before I managed to actually make it, because I wasn't in the habit. We just came through 9 months of (completely understandable) meeting hiatus. We had a trial online meeting in December. The January meeting was uncertain, but went ahead and the consensus of people attending seemed to be that it was worth continuing, so now February is less uncertain. So, mark your calendars. That is all I meant to convey. Implicit is an apology for the late notice. > COVID or not, things change, groups and people move around and > reorganize so there is never a case to be made for not clearly stating > the who/what/when/where for a community meeting. The current ongoing > pandemic provides an opportunity to reinforce the meeting schedule. And, from me, thank you for speaking up for people who might want to attend and reminding me that continuing to be accessible to new people is what keeps PLUG general meetings alive into the future. > Case in point, I might be active on the list but I don't usually show > up for meetings. Therefore, I personally do not know the exact schedule > nor do I have any knowledge of what is involved in joining via jitsi. > Since the only real obstacle for me is transportation, online meetings > are something I would like to join if proper directions are made available. The general meeting schedule has been the same for the 20-odd years I have been attending, first Thursday of the month at 7pm, with irregular departures or cancellations to work around obstacles like holidays or closed buildings. I just looked at the website and we should probably say that explicitly (like it does for the on-hiatus clinic) for the sake of people who aren't regulars. The jitsi meetings ideally need a camera and microphone and a web browser. I have used Firefox successfully, some people have suggested the Chrome/Chromium experience might be better. I have also joined from an Android phone (with the free jitsi app). It is mostly just a matter of clicking the link, letting the browser have access to your camera and microphone, and clicking another link to join the meeting. If you have used other online meeting software like Zoom or Google Meetings, the process is similar. Random idea: Maybe we should have an online clinic, specifically to help people get camera and microphone issues sorted out. December and January meetings were both informal hang outs. People brought up cool (or boring) stuff. I personally really liked the guy talking about a weird guitar (Aaron Wolf and the Kite Guitar). I told/showed that to several people in the aftermath (Thanks Aaron, that was amazing!). At the January meeting, I mentioned a cool talk I saw on hacking the Nintendo Game & Watch, from rC3 (the virtual CCC conference). I showed some photos of my recovered stolen car (which might have bored everyone else, but which I found endlessly fascinating). Other people said interesting things and shared their various experiences. It's not clear there will be an organized speaker for February yet, but another informal hang out would be acceptable and worthwhile to me, under the circumstances. If anyone wants to hear me speak semi-coherently about my mostly successful efforts to reverse engineer the internal communications protocol of an 1980's era IBM Wheelwriter typewriter, I could do that with a little preparation. Consider that a challenge to the mailing list to out-bid me with something or someone better! Cheers! -- Russell Senior [email protected] _______________________________________________ PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
