[Lincs] IRC Meetings & Digital Projector

[Dave Pearson]

* Marc Mc Guinness <marc at mcguinness.de> [2004-08-18 15:05:53 +0200]:

> Dave Pearson wrote the following on 18.08.2004 10:51:
>
> >Take the IRC meetings as a good case in point: I don't know about anyone
> >else but, for me, something like the IRC thing holds no interest and,
> >worse still, it happens at a terribly inconvenient time. [SNIP]
> 
> That's why we had a vote on day and time to meet on irc...

I believe that this vote would have happened before I even knew that LLUG
existed, let alone before I joined the mailing list. If I had have been
around at that time I probably wouldn't have voted anyway because no one
time is better than another.

> I feel that I personally already put in a lot of effort and didn't get a
> lot of interest back yet. I hoped that might change as things develop, but
> it might be too early.

As I think I might have said elsewhere, you might want to reserve judgement
in this regard until we've got a handful of meetings under our belts. It can
take a long time for a group such as this to build up and being disappointed
before you've even held the first proper meeting might mean you're setting
yourself up for further disappointment. I don't think you can really measure
the level of interest until after the first few meetings; at least not until
the very first meeting.

By way of example: Last year's National Astronomy Week was held during
September. Our astronomical society put a lot of time, effort and money into
running a display at Woolsthorpe Manor on the Saturday of the end of that
week. We'd also arranged a couple of lectures in the evening at the same
venue. We advertised it far and wide for weeks in advance: stories in
papers, mentions on local radio, leaflets in libraries and related shops,
etc. It was pretty much a flop. Attendance to the evening lectures could be
measured on the fingers of two hands. We made a loss on the whole thing (not
really helpful to a fledgling society).

Those of us who worked on it didn't take it personally; we understood that
many things compete for people's precious spare time and that not everyone
is as focused on or obsessed by the subject that interests us. We used it as
a learning exercise, as something to help the society evolve. Given that
we've sort of got the view that it'll take about three years to get really
established and given that it was at the end of our first year we understood
that any other view would be missing the point. We did it because we wanted
to do it and it was something worth doing. We didn't expect anything of
anyone else, not even the wider membership. Would it have been nice if at
least all the members had attended? Yes. Were we disappointed with them? No.
It was still summer, people were having holidays, or enjoying the fine
weather, or whatever.

In other words: give it time to get going.

-- 
Dave Pearson
http://www.davep.org/