[TriLUG] an increasingly annoying trend at trilug meetings

Benjamin Reed ranger at befunk.com
Fri Jan 11 09:09:25 EST 2002


> when i'm at a trilug meeting, i look around and realize just how
> much serious brainpower is assembled in one place, and how valuable
> the time of those people can be.  i have no problem investing three
> hours of my time if i figure i'm going to get, say, two hours of
> useful info out of it.  but it becomes much harder to justify if
> i figure i'm only going to get a half hour of info out of it.
> after a while, it becomes a matter of return on investment.

Personally, I thought it went a little long last night, but not so much
that it really bothered me.  I think part of the issue is having different
goals for the meeting.  The list here gets pretty technical -- if I want a
brain power discussion I come here.  I see the meetings as more of a
social thing, with the topic of the evening being just something to drape
real-life get-away-from-your-computer-for-a-minute interaction on.

I've been using Linux for years -- while I sometimes get useful nuggets
from the talks it's more likely that I've already done some research on
whatever's being talked about and have a general idea how it works.
Getting 2 hours of info out of it isn't my goal.  For once not sitting
at a computer and getting out where real people are is.  =)

I can understand your point of view, however, and it certainly wouldn't
be a big blow to social interaction to try to keep it down a little
during the talk -- there's plenty of geeking afterwards.

-- 
Ben Reed a.k.a. Ranger Rick (ranger at befunk.com)
http://defiance.dyndns.org/ / http://radio.scenespot.org/
Frankenstein was the creator -- not the monster.  It's a common
misconception, held by all truly stupid people. -- Kryten



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