Meeting flyer

[Jamis Buck]

Okay--just a quick request. Could a few of you glance at the flyer and
let me know if it looks okay? Any typos I'm not seeing? Etc. FWIW: I
left the meeting time at 7, since that seemed to work for people at the
last meeting. So...one last time...Tuesday, October 19th, at 7 pm, in
room 120 of the TMCB. Sound good?

http://www.jamisbuck.org/rug_flyer.pdf

Thanks! If no one has any objections, I'll print the flyers out tomorrow
and take them to the secretaries in the CS department tomorrow afternoon.

Hans or Jacob -- I can't remember who said they could post an
announcement to the UUG. Whoever it was, you could post the
announcement anytime after the flyer is validated.

 

[Jamis Buck]

Okay--just a quick request. Could a few of you glance at the flyer and
let me know if it looks okay? Any typos I'm not seeing? Etc. FWIW: I
left the meeting time at 7, since that seemed to work for people at the
last meeting. So...one last time...Tuesday, October 19th, at 7 pm, in
room 120 of the TMCB. Sound good?

http://www.jamisbuck.org/rug_flyer.pdf

Thanks! If no one has any objections, I'll print the flyers out tomorrow
and take them to the secretaries in the CS department tomorrow afternoon.

Hans or Jacob -- I can't remember who said they could post an
announcement to the UUG. Whoever it was, you could post the
announcement anytime after the flyer is validated.

Arg. I'm stupid. I meant to send this to my local RUG. *blush*

It's too late. I'm not thinking straight. *sigh*

 

[Bill Atkins]

Jamis,

I'm intrigued about this RUG. How many members do you have? How did
you get it started? I'd love to get involved with something like that
in my area.

Bill

 

[Jamis Buck]

Jamis,

I'm intrigued about this RUG. How many members do you have? How did
you get it started? I'd love to get involved with something like that
in my area.

We've got about 6 (give or take) active members, with three more that
have moved and keep in touch via email (Carl Youngblood among them).
There are a handful more on our mailing list that haven't been to a
meeting in a while. You have to understand--we're at a university with a
student body of 30,000+ students. So a friend of mine and I were talking
one day and thought, "you know, with so many students (and a sizeable CS
department, to boot), there ought to be at least a few people interested
in Ruby."

Thus, we founded the BYU Ruby Users Group. It started mostly with people
in my office, but has gradually grown to include a few other members,
mostly by word of mouth. I post those flyers about a week before each
meeting, but I don't know that anyone has actually attended a meeting
because of one.

I'm curious: has anyone found a successful strategy for adding members
to their RUG?

- Jamis

 

[Ara.T.Howard]

I'm curious: has anyone found a successful strategy for adding members to
their RUG?

poison darts and twine.

-a
--
===============================================================================
| EMAIL :: Ara [dot] T [dot] Howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
| PHONE :: 303.497.6469
| When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good
| bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself. --Shunryu Suzuki
===============================================================================

 

[Jamis Buck]

poison darts and twine.

-a

We'd like the members breathing when they attend the meetings, Ara.
Thanks for the thought, though. I'll be a little more specific next time.

- Jamis

 

[Francis Hwang]

My experience, both with Ruby-NYC and a previous group, is that it's
good not to push it. I was in a previous group that met once a week,
which means that it required a big commitment, and if you could only
come once a month you sort of felt out of the loop of the discussion.
Also, that group worked on a project together, whereas Ruby-NYC is just
a bunch of folks getting together and talking.

Over the last year, Ruby-NYC has grown steadily, but it's never huge --
the last meeting was 7 people, which is our high so far. What we do is:

+ Always assign somebody to give a casual, over-the-shoulder
presentation of some sort. This is usually somebody talking about a
library they wrote, but in theory could also be, for example, a survey
("I needed to pick a Ruby web framework so I looked at all of them, and
here's what I found"). When you have a specific topic for a specific
meeting, sometimes you get people who wouldn't come for a general Ruby
group. Last time, Rob talked about topic maps, so we got a few folks
showing up more to hear about topic maps. ( I've joked that at this
rate, I'll have to rename it the Ruby-Ontology-NYC group. )
+ I've been to these sorts of things both in offices and in semi-public
spaces like internet cafes. There are lots of pluses and minuses to
each approach, but wherever you are I think it's important that you
have quick access to lots of different sorts of snacks & drinks. It
should feel like you're relaxing after work, not working late.
+ Also, I suspect that group coding sessions are for a certain hardcore
faction of programmer, so we don't do a lot of that. We do a lot of
talking and a teensy bit of coding. I'm thinking of mixing that up
occasionally in the future, though.
+ I always send an after-the-fact email to the list where I give a
brief synopsis of what we talked about and how many people came. It
seems to work well to nag lurkers into finally showing up.

F.

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

I'm curious: has anyone found a successful strategy for adding members
to their RUG?

We did well out of immigration last summer. An Israeli and a German
bolstered our ranks in short order. We're lobbying the federal
government to up the intake again this summer.

Cheers,
Gavin

 

[James Britt]

Francis Hwang wrote:

... Last time, Rob talked about topic maps, so we got a few folks
showing up more to hear about topic maps. ( I've joked that at this
rate, I'll have to rename it the Ruby-Ontology-NYC group. )

Are there any notes or other tangibles from this discussion? I'm
interested in Ruby + topic maps as well.

In general, do groups tend to keep any sort of notes from their
meetings? My guess would be that any sort of admin overhead would make
the meetings less fun, but as a practical matter it would be nice if
there were some record of the myriad ad-hoc discussions and presentations.


Thanks,


James Britt

 

[Francis Hwang]

Francis Hwang wrote:



Are there any notes or other tangibles from this discussion? I'm
interested in Ruby + topic maps as well.

Not much, sorry.

In general, do groups tend to keep any sort of notes from their
meetings? My guess would be that any sort of admin overhead would
make the meetings less fun, but as a practical matter it would be nice
if there were some record of the myriad ad-hoc discussions and
presentations.

I've never been in any sort of techie group that keeps detailed notes,
myself. I figure that's what RubyConf is for; monthly Ruby-NYC meetings
are just for hanging out.

F.

 

[James Britt]

I've never been in any sort of techie group that keeps detailed notes,
myself. I figure that's what RubyConf is for; monthly Ruby-NYC meetings
are just for hanging out.

I would imagine so. The Phoenix Ruby Users Group has never gained any
traction, but I would expect that doing anything formal would make
attendance even lower.

James