Call for new organization

[Sean Leather]

Dear Members of the Dutch Haskell Users Group,

I have served off-and-on as the "Monthly Meeting Coordinator" since May 2010 (according to my email history). I don't claim to have done a perfect job at it, but at least we had semi-regular meetings, and many of them were enjoyable. ;)

I am departing The Netherlands for South Africa at the end of this month (March), and I would like to pass the baton on to others who are local and more involved. With this in mind, I would like to call for new discussion on the organization of the Dutch HUG.

In the past, others have helped plan meetings. I would like to thank Nikolaos Bezirgiannis and Sjoerd Visscher for their contributions. Also, thanks goes to Augusto Passalaqua Martins for recently stepping up to organize next week's meeting -- I'll be there.

Perhaps now is a good time to revisit how the organization works and seek interested volunteers who want to help run it.

On a related note, there is also a LinkedIn group that I manage. There hasn't been much activity on it, but there always could be. Any volunteers to take over management of that?

Regards,

Sean

[Sean Leather]

Hi again,

It's been a few weeks since I sent the message below. Nobody has responded, and it makes me wonder how many people are still interested in the Dutch HUG.

On the one hand, that may be okay. Organizations come and go. Trends change. Maybe the commercially-oriented mixed-language FP (e.g. www.meetup.com/funadam/ ) are the current way to go. Maybe everybody is too busy. Dutch HUG meetings do not have to be a permanent fixture.

On the other hand, it would be a shame to lose a platform that has served many people well over the nearly 4 years of its existence. There are still a significant number of people in The Netherlands who use, research, or generally enjoy learning about Haskell and related ideas and languages.

Of course, the mailing list will still exist. It doesn't need much maintenance. But the in-person meetings do make a difference.

In my experience, it takes just a single, dedicated person to organize the kinds of events we've had. So, rather than open up the broader question of organization proposed below, perhaps it is better to ask if there is someone interested in leading. No qualifications necessary, other than a desire to do the job. Is there a volunteer?

Regards,

Sean

[noknok]

Hi Sean,

I am a bit embarrassed to see that we collectively and repeatedly failed to reply to your call. This is really ungrateful to your work as the organizer of our meetings! I am very sorry, Sean. This is worse that the group really is, because I know it is actually a really nice and friendly bunch of people.

However, not answering might the answer all along: Dutch-HUG seems to be saying that it is dead.

We didn't really talk about the future on our last meeting and we should have. We certainly should have celebrated your engagement. I am sorry, that we didn't.

Well, maybe some people will still be able to get up and finally leave some remarks here ... (I almost added "please")

Regards,

Thomas

[Stefan Holdermans]

Thomas wrote to Sean:

> I am a bit embarrassed to see that we collectively and repeatedly failed to reply to your call. [...]

And then—to my surprise, actually—we all remained silent again.

Although it has been a while since I attended a meeting, I still like to think of myself as a member of the group. So here is my two cents...

> However, not answering might the answer all along: Dutch-HUG seems to be saying that it is dead.

Knowing the members of the group, I can hardly imagine this to be the case.

One of the characterising aspects of the Dutch HUG has always been its rather informal nature and its need for only a lightweight organisational structure.

It is my impression that the pub meetings (i.e., those without talks) pretty much organise themselves: we have a calendar with monthly meetings and rotating weekdays that, depending on availability, is sometimes adjusted on the fly. Getting from there to an actual get-together typically only takes a couple of e-mails. I would say we must be able to pull that off even with Sean on the southern hemisphere and, moreover, without "officially" appointing someone to coordinate all this. All it takes is perhaps one or two core members to start mailing-list threads a couple of days before we are supposed to have a meeting.

The meetings with talks are perhaps more problematic. Also, here, I do not think that scheduling is the problem. The calendar, availability-driven on-the-fly adjustments, and the mailing list are sufficient to decide on when to meet and also speakers and topics can be arranged for via the mailing list. However, for making sure that we have a meeting room at our disposal, we have almost always relied on someone at Utrecht University to make reservations and to provide us with physical access. It for those logistics that we could really do with a volunteer from UU...

So, in summary: I think we should cultivate the informal nature of the HUG. There is, in my opinion, no need for an official monthly-meeting coordinator, but rather for someone (or some people) who are willing to take care of logistics three or four times a year. Please ;), let me know your thoughts...

Cheers,

Stefan

[José Pedro Magalhães]

I would like this group to continue existing. Even though I do not live in the NL anymore
(and, as such, it makes no sense for me to organise these meetings), I'm often around,
and would gladly drop by these meetings whenever I can. It's a great way to catch up
with people I haven't seen in a while.

I also agree with Stefan that this definitely does not require much commitment to keep
up; basically just someone to keep a meeting schedule and send an email around
reminding people about the next meeting.

I must say I'm also surprised by the relative silence on this thread! Certainly the ones
that commented so far are not the only ones interested in the DHUG.


Cheers,
Pedro

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[Martijn van Steenbergen]

I emailed Sean privately last week because I couldn't find the email address I was registered with anymore, but since that's been resolved I can reply to everyone again. :-)

I'd also love to see the meetings continue. Unfortunately my schedule has been getting busier and I haven't been able to attend much anymore, and it's also gotten more difficult to plan far in advance. But like Pedro I think it'd be great if the meetings continued and I could drop in every now and then.

Martijn.