london.pm Digest, Vol 17, Issue 18

[michael]

Lets just restate the objectives:-

There are not enough high level perl programmers

I suggest that one way to become a better perl programmer is to become a
member of the perl community

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007, london.pm-request at london.pm.org wrote:
>> I suspect the normal excuce for not going would be:-
>>
>> "I'm soooo busy, I just don't have time to spend a whole day studying
>> ...
>> Perhaps a series of Lunch hour lectures (preferably with tea and
>> muffins afterwards or other tempting event:-)
>
> Surely many people like to have lunch at lunchtime?  And allowing for
> people to travel there and back, questions, and muffins doesn't really
> give any talking time.

IME lunch hour lectures are well attended since it on 'ones own time' 
there is not a requirement to get clearance from 'the boss' to go.
Lunch hour also has the advantage that there are large university lecture
theaters not being used at lunch time...

And on the contrary the muffins are there to encourage talking time 
Remember the object of the game here is to get 'outsiders' into the perl 
community

> More to the point, whichever venue is chosen severely limits those who
> can attend to being nearby -- whereas for a day people can come from
> farther afield.

And they will almost all be from pm groups.  Additinally if the talks
were to be recorded and placed on Google Video,  the potential audiance
becomes much much larger

>> Its easy to suggest when one can't really do (I'm based in Cambridge
>> which puts a bit of a crimp on my London activities)
>
> See, that's exactly what I'm talking about --  London-Cambridge for a
> day is far more feasible than London-Cambridge for a lunch hour!

I'm london.pm and mk.pm I'm not the target demographic and IME the typical 
responce to there is a free training course in London,  is "thats
interesting I 'may' go".....

And as I said before a lecture series has other advantages

Perhaps a lower organizational cost,  getting one person a 
week|fortnight|month to perpare 1 hours material is less strain than 
getting 6 hours of material together on one day

A lecture series has a chance to develop a reputation by word of mouth
I'm willing to bet that after the teach in the organizers will be slumped
in the pub muttering never again....


--
Michael
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Michael John Lush PhD			Tel:44-20-7679-5027
Nomenclature Bioinformatician		Fax:44-20-7387-3496
HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee	Email:  nome at galton.ucl.ac.uk
The Galton Laboratory
University College London, UK
URL: http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/
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