[Robotgroup] Idea for more members

[Andre Lamothe]

I am just thinking real simple at first, so the "option" is there, someone 
wants to give a talk about programming the AVR, or this or that, they post 
an abstract to the group, see if people are interested then pick a meeting 
day to do it. As it catches momentum, then I think thru word of mouth alone 
robot group members can just ask people they know that are working on cool 
things once in a while or expert at something if they want to do a little 
presentation, tutorial, 3-10 people kind of thing. I don't think we need to 
go hunt down speakers and manage it all at this point, that's definitely 
time consuming. I think just within the group and contacts of the group 
should be more than enough to get some very technical and interesting talks 
that have actual use for other members both for fun and professionally.

Andre'

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vern Graner" <vern at txis.com>
To: "The Robot Group Mailing List" <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 6:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] Idea for more members


Eric Lundquist wrote:
> We used to do this with mixed results.  Some talks were packed standing 
> room
> only and others had embarrassingly low turn out.  Mainly, it was a lot of
> work to locate speakers who would commit to speaking to a small group on
> Thursday night.
>
> http://wiki.therobotgroup.org/wiki/PastPresentations

I'm happy to try something new. One of the issues is how do we get the
word out that we have a featured speaker? Also, the available seating
might be an issue...

It occurs to me that if we were to move the tables (maybe place in the
hallway, or stack them) we could place chairs only to make the room more
compatible with a "seminar" format. I would have to check w/Denise to
see if we could do this.

Also, there is a 2nd room that has a projector screen and no "regular"
tables in it. It might be possible to use that room for the speaker..?
again, I would have to check with Denise.

I recall Eric working his butt off trying to arrange for speakers to
come out. He has voiced his opinion above that its a so/so proposition.
Sometimes it works (you get a good speaker and a good crowd) other
times... not so much..

Of course, the old Robohut(tm) didn't really lend itself to a typical
presentation. There really was no good way to get everyone a good view
of the "stage" areas with the giant workbench smack-dab in the middle.. :)

Anyway, I'm happy to help test this theory as long as its OK with
Heritage/Denise however, I don't have bandwidth to chase this down
myself so someone other than me would have to be the lead on this.

Vern

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