[MEET] Adjustments to the monthly meetup schedule

[Swanand Pagnis]

Hi everyone,

At the recently concluded RubyConf India, we did an Un-conference session on "Ruby Community in India".

One of the growing concerns of various meetup organisers was the dwindling attendance, and we discussed attendee issues in reasonable detail.

Following themes emerged from that conversation:

1. Meetups on weekends are an inconvenience to a lot of people, and an outright deal-breaker for a majority.
2. Distance makes it hard for people to attend.
3. Topics discussed at the meetups haven't been very encouraging.

Keeping 1 in mind, we're changing from "Every third Saturday of the month" to "Every this Friday of the month".  

This is in line with our general guiding principal that decision makers in companies aligned with the Ruby community should be encouraging their teammates to attend events on weekdays, as they're very much a part of work.

We cannot much about distance, Bangalore is a large city and people in Whitefield are always going to find it challenging to attend a meetup in JP Nagar. We'll keep circulating the venue geographically to make it as fair as possible for everyone.

For the third category, I have this to say: Be the change you want to see.  If you don't like topics, suggest them. Or better, come and speak about them.  We're here to help you give your first talk.

So, to cut a long story short:

1.  Meetups will now be "Every third Friday of the month"
   
2. Meetup venues will continue to rotate between various companies.  If your company wants to host, please get in touch with the organisers on Meetup.com, or write a comment on that particular meetup's page.

Thanks,

Swanand on behalf of the Bangalore Ruby Community