On Sun, 2007-11-11 at 09:03 -0600, Monty J. Harder wrote:
It's not an objection to the specific site, it's a concern about possible problems that could come out of meeting at any commercial location (which you may recall is what we did while there was no downtown library). Any time a commercial entity hosts a meeting, there's reason to examine the potential ramifications One of the people who stopped by the booth at ITEC said he could probably hook us up to have our meetings at Cerner (where he works), but they'd have to work out some technical details for us to have broadband that was isolated from their corporate network for legal reasons (there's a five-letter acronym that starts with H, but I shan't spell it out as there are ladies on the list, and I'm trying to clean up my language). If we started having meetings there, someone in my company might say that I shouldn't be going, since they're considered a competitor, and it could have the appearance of some undefined impropriety. Meeting at the Public Library helps prevent that sort of thing.
But meeting at the public library also keeps down attendance. Parking is awful, and with Sprint Center and the P&L district opening, it is only going to get worse. The problems with hardware have already been mentioned. Heck, I work downtown and live five minutes away from the library, and *I* hate dragging my carcass out there in the evening (which is why I don't go to meetings). I can't imagine how much groaning must ensue from folks who actually have to drive in from elsewhere (and fight traffic the whole way).
As for the commercial neutrality thing. Technical organizations meet at vendor and/or customer locations all the time. It gets the vendor face time with potential customers, and it gets the organization a place to stay. Everybody is happy. I have yet to have an employer ask me to stay away from an organization because it meets at a competitor's location; in fact, if anyone would be concerned on that mark, it would be the vendor hosting the meeting, because now they're opening their facility to potential competitors and snoops.
Furthermore, the KCLUG might increase membership and activity by taking a more friendly approach to vendors. In addition to great information on technical projects that are cool, they usually bring food and swag -- three of the four magical ingredients for attracting IT geeks to any function (the fourth -- skimpily-clad "show assistants," is probably asking too much of Heartland vendors, but I can always dream). Every day sees a new shop open its doors, either selling solutions that sit on open source or using it in their data centers. We could all learn a lot (and get full stomachs, too) by inviting them in to talk about what they do.
Cambridge Drive is easy to access and centrally located right on a major interstate. It has the additional advantage of being relatively centrally located for the IT "hubs" in Johnson County and the Northland.
+1 on moving to Cambridge.
Matt Copple [email protected]