September 13, 2009
The shape of TechMeetup to come
Having put all of the responses into a tag cloud generator, which produced an nice description of TechMeetup, I thought it best to process the feedback a little further. All of the TechMeetup organisers are meeting this week to ensure we’ve got a good plan for the future. Anyone wanting to gain some serious respect with organising TechMeetup, email me (more information here). TechMeetup is growing fast and we continue to need more volunteers to manage the effort. We can achieve big things people.. 
I’m posting the results of the feedback here so that people who have commented can see how their feedback may have weighed up against others. Forany critics of my statistical accuracy, I should say that 31 people responded with these respective “skews”:
- Fantastic, I wouldn’t change it for the world (14)
- Good but could be better, I’ll tell you why (17)
- Pretty crap, here are some suggestions to fix it (0)
Good, nobody thinks it’s crap.
So what do people think? Here’s a run down, feel free to comment on anything you have an opinion on.
September 13th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
There seems to be a tension between time for guest speakers and time for networking. With the large numbers, individual introductions are taking a long time. Maybe there could be a registration system so that people can enter their interests in advance or at the meeting. Display the full list of people and interests at the meeting. This, combined this with name tags and a time for “special announcements” might streamline the process of finding people with similar interests. It might also be helpful to have space away from the talks for people to chat when they don’t find the presentation relevant to themselves. (but that depends on the venue, of course)
September 13th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Robert, definitely I think there’s some things we can do to streamline this. We had bounced around the idea of a projector displaying a live #techmeetup twitter feed displaying interests etc.
I’m still against namebadges as I think they’re a horrible means to try and communicate anything, but the quest for a more suitable alternative continues.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
How about this for a solution (btw, I think this is ingenious) http://andybright.ws/digital-britian-scottish-unconference-glasgow/
September 18th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I think Robert is talking a lot of sense up there.
Introductions are definitely cumbersome for me and something that could be improved. I always spend the whole time thinking about what I’m going to say rather than actually listening to what people are saying. I only actually register the intros of people who speak after after I’ve babbled my piece.
Thanks for your support Kate. That video came out of a really bad itch I had when I was discovering new groups and events week after week that I had never heard of. Almost everyone I talk to seems to have a frustration about these similar but, astoundingly, still disconnected communities.
I am really really keen to work on the problem but there’s no way I could do it myself. 38minutes is a good start, but too conceptual and not far reaching enough. In many ways I think that their ning network is a failure, creating just as many problems as it solves. If they’d fund it, I’d love to recruit a diverse virtual team to build a real solution.
Sam, if you’re still in need to a helping hand with tmu let me know. Going freelance has brought an inspiring flexibility to my schedule which I’m eager to exploit.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I’d have to agree with Andy and Robert too.
I like having the “say something if you have something interesting to say” approach. Its shorter, and I get to hear the really important things. For everything else, there’s the mailing list + IRC Chat