Re: Meetings Suggestion

[Bryen <suseROCKS bryen com>]

Willie,  On the contrary, I don't see anything you needed to apologize
for.  Like I said the last two meetings were great.  Fantastic even.  I
believe we accomplished some good things in those two meetings.  My
point is simply that we need to ensure that future meeting attendees
aren't turned off by a perception that the discussions aren't of
interest to them.

Let's discuss as a team on Monday which of the ideas work best for us.
Two separate meetings or one meeting split in half?  It's clear that on
certain topics, a fully dedicated hour was of benefit.

Another idea for future meetings:  Inviting guests from various projects
to speak about their developments related to a11y.  For example, having
someone from Mozilla Foundation come out and talk about the good things
they're doing lately.  Not necessarily technical, but aimed at a general
audience.  This could help boost attendance at our meetings, especially
since we do not want only a11y users to participate here.  This could be
a monthly event, and those of us who blog can spread the word.

I would also suggest, as part of our regular agenda, something like a
"Tester Appeal."  For example, over at openSUSE, we're about to release
11.0 Beta.  And we need testers to make sure that the distro is properly
a11y-enabled.  (This was a problem in 10.3 release.)   I'm sure other
distros would love this service as well, since on a per-distro basis,
the pool of a11y users isn't always a significant number.  Having a
service where we can say ... "Hey these guys over there need our help.
Any volunteers?" would work wonders to further a11y inroads across the
board.

Just ideas I'm throwing out here  :-)

Bryen

On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 14:54 -0400, Willie Walker wrote:
> This is a great suggestion Bryen and we can try it out on Monday.
> 
> I apologize for the technical discussions on the last couple meetings - 
> we had the magnification people on the line and we really needed to hash 
> out some ideas in order to get people the info they need to develop a 
> proposal for the GOPA magnification task.
> 
> I'd also like to see this turn into a community meeting, where people 
> from the community can drive the direction and content.  Do you have 
> suggestions for topics for up coming meetings, and would you be willing 
> to volunteer to test the waters with a schedule on the WIKI?
> 
> Will
> 
> Bryen wrote:
> > I think our first two meetings have certainly proven that our weekly
> > meetings have great potential.  I'm looking forward to the success of
> > our gatherings.
> > 
> > One point of concern I have.  Each meeting so far has pretty much
> > focused on one technical topic.  The reason being of course is because
> > those particular topics generally do require that amount of attention.
> > My concern is that if we want our community to grow, we need to ensure
> > that adequate time is given to general topics, tasks, and issues.
> > 
> > For example, we still haven't really talked much about GOPA yet.
> > 
> > If we continue the current trend and it becomes standard precedent, then
> > we run the risk of alienating newcomers and such.  It could be weeks
> > before a meeting with a topic or focus that interests a particular
> > person or persons comes up.  That's a good way to lose potential
> > supporters.
> > 
> > So, for future meetings, I propose two possible solutions:
> > 1)  For each meeting, we dedicate 1/2 hour to a particular technical
> > topic/theme, and the other 1/2 hour on general topics.
> > 
> > or
> > 
> > 2)  Have a general meeting each week and a separate technical topic
> > meeting another time that week.  
> > 
> > In both options, we try to pre-determine the meeting's technical topic,
> > at a previous meeting so that we can have time to bring in relevant
> > experts on that topic.  Perhaps we can create a schedule on the wiki so
> > we can plan several weeks' topics in advance?
> > 
> > 
>