New members

[erickinsella]

GUMers,

There was some discussion on twitter this week on the topic of new to technology XYZ usergroup members and how to best get them involved. The Ruby community here seems to have started a second group. http://rails.mn

I was wondering what are thoughts from our group on this topic? There was a time when a lot of us were new to Groovy and learning together. There seems to be a 2nd wave of people no coming along as I sit and watch during recent GUM meetings. I know the topic has be approached a few times at fishbowls as well, so here are the questions I struggle with...

1. Does it make sense to have a separate group with different mettings date/times? One focused around the UofM since they are using the technology in some areas and would be a draw for a younger crowd? If not the U, somewhere else?

2. Should we have shorter lighting talks (15mins) on more introductory topics before our main prestation?

3. Should we hold "office hours" after GUM for people that have questions with something they are stuck on?

What does the group think?

- Eric

p.s. This group at one time was very active with questions, so don't be afraid to post. We have some of the best and brightest locally and it should be less scary to ask them than let's say the Grails User List. IMHO you'll most likely get a better answer to boot.

[Peter J. Farrell]

Eric,

I thought I would respond because I recently became the co-manager of the Twin Cities Python User Group - pyMNtos (as in what's in the middle of olives).

Here's our general meeting format which I've found to work very well:

• 7:00pm - Informal meet and discuss over Pizza
• 7:30pm - Meeting starts
• Welcome & General Group Business
• Lightning Talk #1
• #ProTips - Picks, Tips or Generally Cool Tech Things
• Lightning Talk #2
• Jobs & Community Announcements
• Lightning Talk #3
• Solicit Talks for Next Meeting & Giveaways -- books, swag, etc.
• Big Talk (if applicable) or Lightning Talk #4
  
• Thanks for Coming (end by 9p)
• A smaller group usually end up at the Bulldog NE or Indeed afterwards -- we do announce this at the end of the meeting.
  

Our lightning talks are 5-10 minutes at most.  We usually set the timer for 6 minutes unless the speaker talks to me about it before.  We don't always have a "big talk" but our schedule allows for it but we usually ask for 20-30 minutes max. We do allow for deep dives (1 hours) if requested, but it's not a popular format for the speakers in our group unless somebody trials a talk they are giving at a conference in the future.

#ProTips is where we go around the room and solicit for cool things people have seen since the last meeting.  We get a nice list of tech things from people -- I'd say 90% of it I've never heard of until the meeting.   We list them on a white board.  ProTips, Jobs, and Announcements are great filler as speakers swap laptops / get setup.

We do encourage members to giveaway tech books they have read but no longer want their shelf. For example, I gave away three books I no longer wanted at the last meeting (Dojo JS book, a SVN book and a Cryptography book) and they were all taken by people with interest

We've found that feeding people is important especially if you want to draw a younger crowd (i.e. students).  We have our meetings at Clockwork Active Systems and they gladly sponsor pizza from Pizza Luce each month.  In a sense, this if "office hours" for the meeting.  The best way to get people to talk is to have name tags.  We just moved to having name tags at February meeting and I'd say there was a lot more "mixing" going on.

Swag is always a nice draw.  I'm working on getting some books from Prentice Hall to giveaway.  Wing IDE for Python recently sent us pens, balsa airplane gliders, a free license to giveaway, a free t-shirt and 50% discount codes for entire group.  After some haggling, it looks like JetBrains is going to sponsor our group -- they will let us give away a free JetBrains license anytime we have over 30 attendees.  Our last meeting (Feb) had 38 people attending.

I haven't been to a GUM meeting since last early Fall, but how is attendance recently?  Does the skill level and size of the group merit starting a second group?  Even with 30+ people at our meetings -- I think a second Python group would just fracture our attendance.

.pjf

erickinsella said the following on 03/02/2013 12:40 PM:

--
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Groovy Users of Minnesota" group.
 
To post to this group, send email to groo...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to groovymn-u...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/groovymn?hl=en
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Groovy Users of Minnesota" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to groovymn+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

-- 
Peter J. Farrell
Principal Technologist - Maestro Publishing, LLC
http://blog.maestropublishing.com
Identi.ca / Twitter: @maestrofjp

Please do not send me Microsoft Office/Apple iWork documents. Send OpenDocument instead! http://fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument/

[erickinsella]

Peter,

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. It's always good to hear what other groups are doing, GUM has in the past been less structured than most.  We will take your suggestions under consideration.

Good news, last month we started offering pizza and beverages but we're still not the best at advertising this. We also recently got a ton of stickers/buttons from VMware to give away.

Also, I'm not sure the size of the group makes sense to have a 2nd. I really just wanted to know what the GUM elders thought and start a conversation. 

Cheers,

Eric

[Natalya Portnov]

Hi Eric,

   

   Attending a user group since ~May, 2012 I would like to share my opinion. It might be a little off topic in this conversation but may help to answer some of the questions you asked.

   I've been to ~5+ meetings. Some of the presentations were very good informative and worth attending. Other I'm not sure I learned a lot from looking at the snippets of code and next the final product real functional application. I was a little lost. What would help to learn from a presentation is coding an app with some basic setup and then at the end demo(ing) the real-life functional application as saying: "This is what you can do with it in real-life!". 

    One suggestion for a meeting could be that we have a live coding that put the attendees on teams to code an app or tool within the meeting. The best is to have the teams put together so that the skill level or experience is varied (newbies, mid-level, and true hackers all on one team). That way the beginners could work with more experienced GUMers and see how to put something together in a short time.  

 

   Regarding your questions:

1. If it will be decided to have a separate group would it be for the new Groovy learners or for all skill levels?

2. If the time saved from lighting talks will be invested in live coding I would vote for shortening lighting talks.

3. Once burned on "asking questions" and not getting any response now before posting a question I ask myself: "Do you want to be ignored again or you want to find a work around to the problem you stuck on?"  Finding a work around wins but at the end I always curios what was that one line of code that I overlooked searching for the solution. So YES that would be great to have an opportunity to ask questions with something people stuck on!!!

   Grateful to people on grovymn answering my questions regarding gvm installation and problems configuring logger.

Thanks!

Natalya

--

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Groovy Users of Minnesota" group.
 
To post to this group, send email to groo...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to groovymn-u...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/groovymn?hl=en
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Groovy Users of Minnesota" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to groovymn+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

--
Natalya G. Portnov

IT Professional

University of Minnesota

Health Studies
200 Oak St SE, Suite 350
Minneapolis, MN 55455

T: 612.625.4329
F: 612.624.3370
E: n...@umn.edu

[Ted Naleid]

Speaking only for myself, I'm not sure that I'd ever be able to make it to a 2nd user group every month and there have been periods where we've struggled getting speakers/presentations even for one meeting a month.  I'd favor having every Nth presentation geared towards more intro level groovy users (and advertising it as such), or a meeting with lightning talks where at least some of them are more intro oriented.

If people would find something like "office hours" useful after meetings (and would utilize it), I'd be happy to support that.

-Ted

--

[erickinsella]

Great feedback everyone, I think we'll give the follow a try for the next meetup.

6:00pm - Informal meet/greet and discussion over pizza

6:15pm - Meeting starts

Welcome, general group business, jobs & community announcements (~5 mins)

Lightning talks (if any ~5-10mins) Can include but not limited to (Tips, tricks or new technologies)

Main talk

Office Hours (Volunteers needed)

A smaller group usually ends up at the Bulldog NE (replace the Bulldog with a TBD Northeast establishment and a announcement will be made.)

Also in May we're planning a Groovy/Grails Hackathon with a focus on grails plugins. Where small groups will work together on fixes/features and submitting pull requests to their favorite plugins. If you have plugin ideas share them with the group. We have a few things in the works, so more to come later on that front.

- Eric