That sounds like a good approach Tim. The ruby meetup is a strange place: Entertain me. Train me. Don't bore me. Don't waste my time. Sometimes; Feed me *free* food.
But—I won't offer anything to make this happen. I'd be most happy to employ such a technique for next month, only; I won't be available. Maybe someone else can take this idea and run with it. I'll announce this discussion tonight. On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Tim Lucas <[email protected]> wrote: > On 29/07/2010, at 10:34 AM, Ben Schwarz wrote: > > > The speakers put in a hell of a lot of preparation time, I'd hate for > anyone to feel "rejected". > > This is happened before, it sucked. I don't want it happening again. > > > > Speakers change from day to day. As an estimate, I aim to book 6 talks > and expect > > to only ever have 3. People drop out. > > Just some notes about how we do it in Sydney... > > If speakers drop out then the presentation part simply finishes early > (early drinks!), so people tend not to drop out. I think catering to 50% > drop-outs is just going to perpetuate the problem. We all feel like piking > when the nerves start and it get's closer to the night, and you have to > actively encourage people to push through and give it a shot. > > One thing that works well in Sydney is having allocated time slots. We aim > for 2 x 20 talks, and 4 x 5 min talks. If you don't turn up, you wasted a > slot, and you should feel bad. With this you get to advertise the schedule > ahead of time, which *always* boosts attendance (for many reasons, including > those John spoke about), just like conferences get more attendees when they > show the actual line-up of presentations. If it's a truly unique event then > people will come without a schedule, if it's a regular or repeated event > then it's the schedule that makes it unique and persuasive. > > The wiki and allocated time slot system is simple, predictable, and easy to > organise ("there's the wiki, put your names down!"), and gives people the > schedule ahead of time. The wiki timeslot thing is similar to how we do RSVP > for the #workatjelly too, and people feel bad if they don't turn up but used > up a wiki slot. Highly recommended! > > – tim > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<rails-oceania%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
