[Baypiggies] Mapping/Random Access at tonight's meeting

[Dennis Reinhardt]

At 12:42 AM 4/14/2006, you wrote:
>Dennis,
>
>[I think the mapping worked very well tonight. Awesome idea.


Thanks!  (mapping = rapid-fire, brief self-intros with no discussion, 
allowing interested parties to seek you out in immediately following Random 
Access session)

>we want to encourage newbies to introduce themselves and
>their interests

Several first time attendees picked up on what mapping was good for and 
*did* make announcements.  I think seeing many people stand up, make their 
announcements, and sit down (thank you) was context allowing them to speak 
too.

I prefer not to set aside a separate newbie introduction time.  There is no 
previous template for newbie to follow and little time to prepare.  You 
either get formulific intros (I am Greg from Foster City ... I am Sheila 
from Mountain view .... yeech) or meandering.

The HomeBrew experience is that everybody very quickly spins up to the same 
level to figure out how to use mapping to make connections.


>There's only one issue: 8:30pm is probably too early ...
>So should we push to 9pm in future?

Our schedule is 7:30-9:00.  From our IronPort meeting, I saw that no one 
left during mapping but some left immediately at beginning of random access 
and several more stayed only a few minutes.  People stayed for mapping and 
participated actively.

I feel we should budget 10 minutes mapping at IronPort and 15 at Google 
with 5 minutes allowed for random access.  This 5 minutes allows someone to 
make quick contact with 1 person and then still leave on time at 
9:00.  Thus, IronPort Random Access should start at 8:45 (vs. 8:30 last 
night) and Google start at 8:40.

I am reluctant to push random access start to 9:00.  That is extending the 
length of the meeting.  IMO, the key to having better meetings is 
preparation and thoughtful pacing, not by making them longer.



----------------------------------
| Dennis    | DennisR at dair.com   |
| Reinhardt | Powerful Anti-Spam |
----------------------------------