fall/winter/spring meetings

[Gagnon C.A.]

Since (academic) "summer" is now over, I thought it would be better for the passers-by for us to migrate the discussions about fall/winter/spring meetings to a discussion of its own.

I am interested to see what comes from us putting our calendars out there for comparison purposes, looking for common "holes" (and something for which we can find a convenient meeting location).

[Gagnon C.A.]

Future meeting times and places is (and will be) a topic of conversation.

Perhaps the survey can be updated for the November/December timeframe as well? (I'll let Seth speak to that.) If Monday is a bad day for you, then feel free to block them out.

[Seth W. Klein]

Date selection for this meeting was done as an experiment with a Doodle poll (see earlier comments) for just this meeting. The future is yet to be decided, feel more than free to add your .02 USD. (Or I hear Canadian is right up there now so that might work, too.)

[Corey Osgood]

I have no set days/times that I work, I work whenever the customer's are available. So whenever works for everyone else is fine, I just need to know in advance ;)

How'd the meeting go?

[Gagnon C.A.]

Well, I got a chance to meet up with Seth and one of the Mitches for the first time in a while, although I had to leave for a municipal meetng shortly after that.

I didn't hear from Seth or anyone else if someone came in after that, but I doubt it.

I know circumstances pop up that prevent people from coming (even to myself), iI think we were hoping to get more of a critical mass together with the polling fore meeting dates, etc..

I thought Seth put together a successor Doodle poll, but I didn't see a link for it anywhere; I'll try to make a new one if it doesn't show up soon (and I can't find the one he made). We can try it again, better publicize the outcome, and see what results from it.

Incidentally, there is a twist on this proposal, which I'll take up on another thread.

[Seth W. Klein]

I have not made a new Doodle poll. My last (and first and only, I should remind myself) attempt was a great success in that I wasn't the only one to fill out the poll, but it had the expected results that only Christian and I showed up. I know a couple things to do better next time, but I think odds * reward < effort * me. Anyone for whom the equation works out differently is welcome to have a go at it.

[Corey Osgood]

Perhaps just set a possible date, say like 3 weeks from the date of the post, and a message that if it doesn't work to reply. Then send out a message through the mailing list to everyone that the tentative date has been set, and if it doesn't work for them to reply to $post. If the date changes, repeat the mailing list bomb. I'm sure we can work from there. I'd really love to attend, but I'm working 2 jobs, one of which takes me all over the state, so planning needs to be well in advance. It doesn't matter one bit when the day is though (hence the lack of filling out said doodle poll), I just need to know. And I honestly don't follow the discussion here much, since it isn't very active.

With that second item in mind, we could just do the planning on userfriendly.org, might pick up a couple extra members at the same time. Yes, I'm half-joking, but only half...

[Seth W. Klein]

If you want to have a go at getting together a meeting, feel free. As for the method, your effort, your method. I'll interface with PC/Mac Techs if you want to meet there, and I'll take part in whatever date planning scheme you provide. Have fun!

[Gagnon C.A.]

I didn't see that I could "update" the Doodle widget to extend the timeframe, or fork it to make another one for the next meeting. Can you do that, or would we end up just creating one anew?

[Seth W. Klein]

I can actually edit it, but there's no gain in doing so since it's less work to start with a clean slate.