[Cialug] LUG meeting - @ Inplay?

[Nathan Stien]

On 6/14/07, Barry Von Ahsen <barry at vonahsen.com> wrote:
> I think rotating is a good idea.  There are people that haven't shown
> since we moved from Urbandale, and there are groups that didn't show
> until we moved - it's all about convenience.  There's probably another
> group that would show up if we met in Ankeny, Altoona, the
> south/southwest side, etc.  If we held a north Ankeny meeting, we could
> probably even draw some folk from Ames since they're not holding
> meetings anymore, AFAICT

It's weird to me that moving from Urbandale to downtown is exclusive
to anyone.  A difference of ~15 minutes of travel time to go to a ~4
hour monthly event is really what kills it for people?  I've only
lived here since last October, but there does not seem to be any one
place in the metro area that I really consider "far", especially for
something as elastic as the LUG.  Nobody cares if you're late or if
you leave a little early.  It's a just a nice li'l block of geek time
with beer, and at least some of the people there will actually laugh
at a Red Dwarf* reference.  (* Or insert other obscure SF reference of
your choice).

I say this not to criticize anyone (Hello Urbandale holdouts, maybe
I'll meet you soon...), but just to say I don't grok it.  Maybe if
it's just not that fun for you personally, the +15 mins really does
kill it.  *shrug*

I grew up in a smallish town that was about half an hour away from the
Real Town (tm) which had all the Neat Stuff (tm), so I guess I'm used
to a minimum 30 minute drive each way to do much of anything.

It would be interesting to have a google map of DSM where we could
drag the meeting location around, and it formed the epicenter of a
higlighted quasi-circle showing the region of people willing to come
to that particular meeting location.  Then throw in a chance to bring
home some free hardware and watch that circle suddenly quadruple in
area...

-- 
Nathan P. Stien
Consulting Engineer / Software Developer
Embedded Systems Electronics and Software
http://linkedin.com/in/nathanstien
Mobile: 309.241.2581