[Baypiggies] Meeting location (was Videotaping presentations)

[Shannon -jj Behrens]

On 6/2/06, Marilyn Davis <marilyn at deliberate.com> wrote:
> ------- On Friday, June 2, 2006 aahz at pythoncraft.com wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jun 02, 2006, Marilyn Davis wrote:
> >> ----- On Friday, June 2, 2006 aahz at pythoncraft.com wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Jun 02, 2006, Marilyn Davis wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Again, what is the reason for having the confusion and complication of
> >>>> two meeting sites when one has creature-discomforts and is harder to
> >>>> reach for many more people?
> >>>
> >>> Do other people agree that IronPort is really that much more
> >>> uncomfortable than Google?  Believe me, I'm extremely sympathetic to the
> >>> issue of acoustics, but there have also been a number of people who can
> >>> get to IronPort but not Google.  As long as that is a significant
> >>> population, I don't think we should cut them out.  Perhaps finding
> >>
> >> I thought that Stephen's survey discovered that there are many more
> >> people who can get to Google but not Ironport than vice-versa.  And I
> >> think it showed that the further north and east, the fewer people.
> >
> >>From my POV, it wouldn't matter if there were five hundred people who
> > could get to Google but not IronPort, as long as there are at least ten
> > or fifteen people who can get to IronPort but not Google.  And, yes, I'm
>
> Really?  I don't understand that point of view.

Aahz would rather make all of the people happy some of the time than
some of the people happy all of the time.  I agree with him.

> > speaking as someone for whom Google is much easier to reach than
> > IronPort.  BayPIGgies is for the SF Bay Area Python community, and I
>
> That's what I mean about geography.  I don't understand why one club would claim to be *the* club for the whole bay area.

Because splitting the club in two risks losing critical mass.  There
are only so many pythonistas and so many speakers willing to speak.

>  It seems a bit greedy. If this club, which has its geographic center determined by the fact that meetings were at Stanford for so long, relinguishes its claim on so much geography, there would be an opening for more clubs in the bay area.  I'd rather encourage more clubs, and encourage speakers to travel, than to expect the audience to travel around the bay.

I wish it were the case that I could just create clubs wherever and
people would come, but I don't think it's the case.  I don't think
that BayPiggies is being "greedy" at all.

> If there are 10 or 15 people who can get to Ironport, but not Google, maybe our speakers would be willing to do both places, saving lots of gas and collective travel time.

Sure, if they were getting paid ;)  The problem with good programmers
is that they don't have much free time.  Furthermore, larger groups
means better networking.  Imagine if the East Bay people never got to
hang out with Guido and Alex just because they were in the East Bay
instead of in Silicon Valley!

> > think an important aspect of community is making community resources
> > available to as many different members of the community as possible,
> > rather than maximizing the resources given to "central" members of the
> > community.
>
> Which resources are we talking about?  We're not talking about "central" members, but a large majority of the members.  Alex, it's not selfish to argue for what the majority wants.  Ignoring the majority for some vague notion of geographic dominance, or for maintaining status quo, or whatever is driving this, is illogical and self-defeating for the club.
>
> And again, I wonder about the decision-making process here.  Is it that Aahz decides, even though he doesn't go to meetings?  And this is because he runs the email list?  JJ has volunteered to do the email list because Aahz has complained that he doesn't have time.  What happened with that?

It fizzled.  Aahz argued that splitting the mailing list had in his
past experience been a bad idea, and I figured that was a reasonable
argument.  The problem went away because there's been a lot less
traffic lately :)

> I seem to be missing the sense in all this.  Aahz, where are you coming from?

See my very first comment.

> p.s.  Is there anyone willing to tape at Ironport?  If not, then that's another minus for Ironport.

We hold the Bay Area FreeBSD users' group at IronPort, and we tape
that.  I've just been too lazy^H^H^H^Hbusy to take care of it myself.

Best Regards,
-jj