We have a meeting coming up this week (Thursday the 12th). We’re also going to be meeting in a different place and we’ll be trying out an entirely new format!

Location

We’ll be meeting up at the Snowtide office where Chas works. They have access to a good sized meeting room and Chas has been kind enough to volunteer it. It’s located in the Potpourri Plaza in Northampton, across the street from the Stop and Shop.

Food

Chas will be ordering up a party platter from D’Aneglo’s! I was very pleased last time we ate this and I am looking forward to it. There will be a box at the door, please donate some money to cover the snacks. We’ll be taking any money above and beyond the cost of the platter and putting it towards food for the next meeting.

Format

We’re going to be trying out a new format: the unconference! We’d like you to think about a topic that you would be interested in talking about and then posting it to our “Suggested Topic” wiki page (thank you, Doug). Any topic you might be interested in talking about is great and don’t worry about having a formal presentation; if you can talk about the topic for five minutes, you’re all set. You’ll talk about your topic and then let people ask questions and start talking to each other. Think of it as a way to get a conversation started. I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

Schedule

Our proposed schedule is…

• 6:00 - 7:00 — room & food setup
• 7:00 - 7:30 — time to eat and mingle — maybe a quick intro to the “process” we’re going to try
• 7:30 - 8:15 — first time slot for defined topics
• 8:15 - 9:00 — second time slot for defined topics
• 9:00 - 10:00 — time to mingle and chatter some more + cleanup (help appreciated here as well)

This is going to be a lot fun! See you there.