Re: UISG V2.0 Conference..

[Bowie Poag <bjp primenet com>]

> > Bowie screwed up by scheduling it on his sunday.  He COULDN'T change the
> > time though; WAYYYYYY too many places had already listed the time.  The next
> > one better be at a better time or I'll have to kick his ass.
> 
> I'll buy this one far better if Bowie would admit the mistake, and
> promises to discuss scheduling before the next conference.  Note: before
> flaming, the only mistake I am talking about here is the scheduling
> mistake.

Looks like people want to call in the Grand Jury to get to the bottom of
why the conference was scheduled for Sunday, 7PM Eastern..

 o Mistake #1: No GMT equivalent was given, which irritated alot of Euro
   folks. :) An honest mistake, not meant to insult our pals across the
   pond. To be honest, I had gone a day and a half without sleep when
   the announcement was written. I was bound to slip up on something.

 o The time was chosen, intentionally, to be comfortable for participants
   in North America this time. The next conference will be scheduled to
   be more comfortable to European time schedules. There really is no 
   time where its going to be comfortable for EVERYONE, so, im my eyes,
   its more of a question of "who do we cater to this time?"..Pick one.
   North America, or Europe. Conference #1 happened to be a conference
   with scheduling preferable to North America. That means, next time,
   it wont be. 

 o The line had to be drawn somewhere. You can make some of the people
   happy ALL of the time, ALL of the people happy SOME of the time..
   But you'll *never* make ALL of the people happy ALL of the time.
   To me, settling on a time is not a "pick the middle" issue. If you
   were to come up with a time that were comfortable for everyone, it
   would have been like 8AM, Sunday morning--And theres no way in hell
   anyone would be up that early. That would have meant that I would
   have had to pull an all nighter. Its not like I could roll out of
   bed at 7:59 with my tuxedo on, ready to hold a conference. :)

 o Why sunday? A) Because I needed the time to fully prepare for the
   Conference (getting the webpage up, putting the finishing touches
   on the Skeleton document, etc) ..Also, people generally set aside
   free time on Sundays, more than they do on Saturdays. However,
   almost certainly the next Conference will be held on a Saturday.
   I had been up a little over a day and a half straight prior to
   the start of the conference, and was STILL working, even up to
   like an hour before the show, with finishing touches on the
   documents & webpage material.

 o Why 4PM on Sunday? Since I was aiming it to be specific to most
   comfortable (in scheduling terms) to North America, 4PM my time
   (5PM Mountain, 6PM Central, 7PM Eastern) provides good blanket
   coverage of prime time. Its the best place because you have
   the most people awake, and the fewest people asleep. 

 o I had no intention of issuing a "rescheduling" announcement. Such
   a thing would have only confused matters. 



> > He already listed the web page to go to; http://www.primenet.com/~bjp/
> 
> For future reference, Primenet seems to be a site that has problems.  Many
> of the things I tried to look at under Bowie's wab pages seemed to stop
> partway through the download for no particluar reason.  Specifically, the
> photos on the front page didn't resolve completely, the updated skeleton
> would not finish downloading, the quesstion page stopped at question 11
> out of 20.  Perhaps another site might be advisable.

Hmm.. Thats odd. I remember you mentioned that at the Conference, but I
dont think anyone else had gotten the same problem. Where are you located?
The conference (and everything along with it) was centered in Phoenix,
Arizona.. Extreme southwest USA. 

> > >The mailing list is an ideal place for this, a place which Bowie is not
> > >making use of.
> > 
> > 
> > What the hell is he doing talking in here?  :-)
> 
> He is talking here about many things in the abstract.  When I said the
> sentence you quote, I was under the misimpression that more detailed
> things were to be hammered out on IRC.  Now that the conference is over,
> it is clear that he is being as abstract in the conference.

Fred,

The agenda that was covered at the conference was announced and made
available well in advance, and also alluded to in the Conference
announcement that made it to this mailing list, Slashdot, and Freshmeat.

Given the volume of traffic on this mailing list, tho, I dont blame you
for having the question mark over your head. :)

> 
> I am not.  This list is not closed.  To my knowledge, this list has never
> denied access to anybody.  To my knowledge, the only way to get denied
> access to this list is to be abusive or harrasing.
> 
> I never said that IRC meetings were bad.  I said that IRC was an
> inappropriate place to discuss the details of the style guide.  Now that I
> have attended one of these IRC meetings, it is clear to me that details
> are not what Bowie had in mind.
> 

I coulda told you that. :)

Not to take a whiz on the Conference attendees or anything, but the
"details" of the UISG really should be kept (mostly) within the confines
of the mailing list. John's and Tom's work is helping contribute to this
process in a big way.

The general public, despite its good intentions, doesnt have the same
know-how, and the same level of insight that we do, on the mailing list.
This isnt to say the general public is unimportant -- Theyre just as
valuable -- We need the input from all angles, not just a collection of
comments from those in-the-know.

> How does GIMP stand in direct contradiction to what I am saying.  I point
> out problems with IRC, you give me an application?  I fail to understand
> the argument.
> 
> If, you are referring to the IRC meetings that I am told were part of the
> GIMP development, all I know about them is what Bowie mentioned, which is
> that the developers found them cruical.  I know nothing about where they
> were held, how they were advertized, or or if they addressed the points I
> was making, or how similar or different they were from Bowie's meeting.
> 

Whoooooah, back up here.

   Youre wrongfully attributing those quotes to me. I didnt say those
   things. I have no idea how GIMP did their conferences. I've done ALOT
   of this sort of thing before (online conferences, I mean) so, in 
   my mind,I dont really need to justify to anyone whether or not theyre
   a "good idea"... I mean, of course they are.

Bowie