You may recall we conducted a quick poll gauge the feeling of Melbourne members as to how frequently we would like to meet.
Well we weren't exactly over run with replies but those that did mostly favoured 4 weeks, though many could live with six.
I've discussed this with David, and we feel that if there had been more responses, we'd feel more confident about moving the meetings to a monthly basis.
In principle we would like to move to monthly meetings.
But what we have decided to do in the meantime is to keep the scheduled meeting on Monday August 23 as is, which is only a month away from today anyway. We would then like to schedule the next meeting for six weeks after that, which I make as October 4, just after Web Essentials.
We will leave time at the next meeting to discuss this stuff. If you can't make it, feel free to let us know what you think by replying to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
So have a think about whether you think we can get the numbers as well as sustain speakers for a 4 week turnaround or whether we stick with 6 weeks.
To give you some things to think about I'll leave you with some emails we received which made some good points(which other groups may also want to consider)...
Lachlan Hardy had some good suggestion which I post here (almost in full):
"An alternative would be that we wouldn't necessarily have a presentation at every meeting. The discussion and general carry-on is at least as important, so I've been trying to think of some options to increase that
Maybe we have a theme for each meeting (that doesn't have a presentation)? I was thinking of something along the lines of Dan Cederholm's SimpleQuiz. We set a typical web standards problem as the topic and folks come along to discuss it. That is the kind of thing that will drag debate from people who would normally stay quiet. If some people had prepared code, they could show it and we could discuss that too. Although I guess that depends on what the proportion of actual coders/designers is to management-style folks (from my one meeting it seems firmly tipped towards the coders and designers), because it could be an interest-killer for managers to sit through that
My old man (the other Des) has suggested a bit of a 'Show and Tell'. He thinks that instead of having a formal presentation, you could have a couple of folks designated to jump up briefly and show something that they've worked on recently. You'd have to stress that total lack of formality or expectation (or we'd never get anyone up there). They could indicate any problems they had, even typical ones (perhaps especially typical ones) and how they countered them. See if that sparks a few questions, or a debate on the merits of whatever and then one to the next kid in the class
Des also suggested that perhaps you could keep the rotation of formal presentations the same (ie every 8 weeks) in order to allow for conning someone particularly impressive into it, and fill the intervening meetings with other options such as the ones I've suggested above"
Michael Allan writes:
"As another suggestion, I was sorry to see the general discussion disappear after the first session - with the meetings devolving to small discussion groups immediately after the presentation, I think we miss out on a good chance to thrash out some of the thornier issues together. I'd suggest a format like this:
Informal chat as people arrive
Call to order (including invitation to get drinks)
Notices and presentation
Break
Questions to presenter and general discussion
Break
Informal chat as people leave"
Finally, Cameron Adams (aka The Man In Blue) suggests "I think we should hold a Standards-based bikini contest."
cheers dez
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