On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 9:14 PM, Matthew Woodward <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 8:37 PM, Kevin LaTona <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> Thinking out loud here but I wonder if the need for a "local user group" >> has come to end of life? >> > > ... I couldn't disagree more with the notion that local user groups aren't > necessary in the age of all the online resources you cite. > > There's no question that things like stackoverflow are where people go to > get specific questions answered quickly. But to me that's not at all what a > local face-to-face user group is about. There's something much more > powerful about an in person, interactive presentation that still can't be > matched online, and I for one always learn a great deal more valuable > lessons from in-person presentations. > It is worth asking, however, what we want SeaPIG to be and whether its goals need updating. The coordinators group has actually been doing this over the past year to articulate what we like about SeaPIG and want to keep doing, and what we want to try doing more of. The recent sprint-like meetings and inter-meeting hack sessions are an outgrowth of that. The new room we've gotten in Office Nomads is also an outgrowth of Jon leveraging an opportunity. SeaPIGgies have always had a healthy skepticism of technology. I got my first cellphone in 2000 and still have a barely-does-texting model. (I am looking forward to the Ubuntu phones though, although it looks like compatible models are in the $500 range.) We have avoided Google and Facebook dependencies so far, as not giving us enough value for their entanglements. IRC is still the messager of choice for project coordination. It's paradoxical that people in the computer field are less gee-whiz than our 24-hour texting and twittering friends outside it. Or in other words, "I understand computers so I don't trust them any further than I can throw them." My "build an index of tutorials" idea was not envisioned as a sprint per se but as a project. I.e., something that might span multiple sessions and be done mostly at home, with the sessions more geared toward coordination than actually looking up sites and updating the wiki. More generally, I wonder if people would like to do more projects together. I.e., something where we're coordinating at the meetings but have the option of working on at home. I do my best programming at home where I have my full environment, than in a meeting where I'm constrained by a netbook/laptop, which I find much more cumbersome for programming. Another idea would be to invite other SeaPIGgies to our non-computer activities. I've been doing some walking around town and joined a group called Seattle Transit Hikers on meetup.com. If anyone wants to do that, we may end up talking some Python while we're walking. The group tends to do long 2-3 hour walks in the city or woods. There's another walking meetup I'm eying that does more one neighborhood at a time with a local "tour guide". We may also want to consider alternating the meetings on two different days, for those who have persistent schedule conflicts on Thursdays. Perhaps try for a Tuesdayish or Wednesdayish in March or April?
