[Baypiggies] Dec. 14 Meeting "Programming Productivity: What Really Matters?"

[Dennis Reinhardt]

At 05:22 PM 12/13/2006, Anna Ravenscroft wrote:

>OR can we have some freeform socializing BEFORE the official part of
>the meeting -

Anna,

I have regularly attended the pre-dinner meetings Brian has organized (at 
least the ones at IronPort).  They may well be the social time you are 
looking for and in the time frame you ask for.

If one looks at the agenda template we have had this year, it looks like:

         7:00 - 7:30 unstructured pre-meeting
         7:30 - 9:00 meeting program

Nothing has prevented people from socializing in the 7:00 - 7:30 
pre-meeting time frame.  By my observation, not that much socialization 
gets done then.  Whatever limiters there are in socializing in the 7:00 to 
7:30 time frame are likely to affect tomorrow's meeting as well.  Suppose 
we revise the schedule to read

         7:00 - x:yz social
         x:yz - 9:00 program

I don't think moving the 7:00 earlier is that easy without checking the 
room schedule or someone from Google taking responsibility for being 
there.  Could happen but the fact is that we already have an time preceding 
every meeting where completely unstructured socialization is possible.

Suppose we set x:yz to 7:40, allowing JJ's presentation to take the entire 
80 minutes.  IMO, we have run that experiment as well and it is called 
starting the meeting 10 minutes late.  I have not seen the demand for that.

The major alternative here is set x:yz to 9:00 and shut down JJ's talk 
entirely.  My sense is that JJ has a great talk planned and while meet and 
greet was preferred to no meeting at all, JJ's unabridged talk and 
free-for-all discussion (i.e. what passes for socialization for some of us) 
is a preferred use of the time available.

If you have not attended the pre-meeting dinners, I can recommend them as a 
good way to socialize.

Dennis


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| Dennis    | DennisR at dair.com    |
| Reinhardt | http://www.dair.com |
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