[Brug-admin] Post-FOSDEM momentum

[Tom Klaasen]

+1 for the IRL meetings. It's a lot easier to discuss (and dream) if you can
see each other.

The first meeting could be used to discuss the first 'workshop'...

kr,


On 2/26/08, Peter Vanbroekhoven <peter at xaop.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> The devroom at FOSDEM was quite successful, so cheers on that. After
> FOSDEM we had 15-20 more subscribers to brug-talk than before FOSDEM, so
> some people already took the bait. So all's well. But...
>
> It isn't the time to sit still. We should use the momentum we've built
> to keep going. But enough motivational talk...
>
> First off, there has been a gap of almost 5 months between the first
> BRUG meeting and the FOSDEM devroom. I'm probably not alone in thinking
> that this is a bit too much. I'm not saying that we should have an event
> like FOSDEM every month, but I still think we should meet more often.
> The way I see it now, we could discern the following categories of
> meet-ups:
>
> * Regular BRUG get-together: a monthly meeting in a cafe or so where we
> can talk about Ruby, life, anything we want. No pressure to attend each
> time, no pressure on topics, just getting together and socialize. This
> should be low overhead, i.e., we pick a date and come who can/wants to
> come.
> * More formal BRUG meetings: these could be anything, from hackatons to
> semi-formal presentations. I wouldn't put the pressure on this one
> either, but rather do this when it arises. So if someone feels like
> giving a presentation, we could organize a meeting. If someone wants to
> kick off a new project and is looking for a few fellow developers to
> help, we could organize a coding session. I'm sure at some point we all
> have thought about implementing a small utility, a Ruby lib or a Rails
> plugin. These coding sessions are great to kick such a project into
> gear; it's surprising what a few motivated programmer's can put together
> in a few hours. It's how Rubygems got started :-)
> * Formal seminars: I was thinking along the lines of some of the events
> organized by SAI, i.e., http://www.sai.be/nl/eventdetail.aspx?ev_id=153
> . We could advertise this to companies and such. This could be an
> important vehicle in promoting Ruby in Belgium. Many companies see Ruby
> as a hype and are thus hesitant to jump on the bandwagon out of fear of
> investing in a fad that will be over before they got back what they
> invested in it. We should convince them that it is worth it. Once we get
> going, we could even invite prominent speakers (although then we'll need
> to charge for it probably).
> * The big guns: once we get going, we can organize bigger events like
> half/one-day conferences. This one is still way off in the future, but
> it is something to keep an eye on. We already did this in the form of
> FOSDEM, but I was thinking about something stand-alone, something we
> advertise to companies.
> * BRUG-admin meetings: although we can have discussions online, nothing
> beats a real-life meeting where you can brainstorm on important
> issue/decisions.
>
> My feeling tells me that the first and last type of meeting could very
> well turn out to end up the same. It's likely to be the hardcore group.
> But anyway, it would be nice if we could get these regular meet-ups
> going. Because we don't need any infrastructure for it, we can easily
> vary the location.
>
> Another important thing is to build a decent website. Currently, we have
> some information online, but it's certainly not sufficient. Instiki was
> great to quickly get some information online, but it is certainly not a
> durable solution. I think we need to brainstorm on what we will need to
> build a decent website. I would like to organize a BRUG-admin meeting
> for this in 2 or 3 weeks time. And then have the first regular BRUG
> meeting a few weeks after that, just to start going. Sound reasonable?
>
> Peter
> _______________________________________________
> Brug-admin mailing list
> Brug-admin at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/brug-admin
>



-- 
Tom Klaasen
10to1
+32 475 28 17 62
http://www.10to1.be
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/brug-admin/attachments/20080226/cf062706/attachment.html