Fresh or otherwise... :)

We need speakers, topics, ideas, and anything else that you can think of to have a useful group. A paragraph of whining follows...

We had a great start in January with one full length presentation by Andrei and two lightning talks by deadalnix and another member. Unfortunately, we could not have much success since then. I gave a presentation in February, which was appreciated by a small number of newcomers but we had to cancel the March meetup. :( We are in April now and not only there is no speaker yet, nobody even participates the discussions at the Meetup page:

  http://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/

Please let me know if you can participate in any way. Otherwise, I am (and certainly Shammah is) happy to fill every single month with introductions, tutorials, or other cool stuff but we would like to have a more lively atmosphere; not a one-man or two-men show.

You can post on the Meetup page or write to me directly at acehreli@yahoo.com

Thank you,
Ali

On 4/9/2015 12:03 PM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> Fresh or otherwise... :)
>
> We need speakers, topics, ideas, and anything else that you can think of to have
> a useful group. A paragraph of whining follows...
>
> We had a great start in January with one full length presentation by Andrei and
> two lightning talks by deadalnix and another member. Unfortunately, we could not
> have much success since then. I gave a presentation in February, which was
> appreciated by a small number of newcomers but we had to cancel the March
> meetup. :( We are in April now and not only there is no speaker yet, nobody even
> participates the discussions at the Meetup page:
>
>    http://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/

This is a perennial problem with any monthly thing. A couple suggestions:

1. Couple it with an excursion to the local watering hole afterwards for beers. This works for us at the nwcpp.org monthly meetings.

2. Invite speakers from companies that may not be involved with D, but produce a product of interest to D programmers, such as NVidia which wants people to make tools for programming GPUs.

3. Invite speakers from, say, Stanford, to talk on general CS programming topics.

> Please let me know if you can participate in any way. Otherwise, I am (and
> certainly Shammah is) happy to fill every single month with introductions,
> tutorials, or other cool stuff but we would like to have a more lively
> atmosphere; not a one-man or two-men show.

Actually, that can be pretty good. If you do a tutorial style each month, and video them, you can build up a library of such instructional D videos that we can promote separately. Instead of the Khan Academy we can have the Ali Academy :-)

nwcpp.org also usually offers pizza as well. A sponsor will bring in pizza, and in exchange they spend a few moments pushing their agenda (which is usually recruiting).

On 04/09/2015 12:57 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> nwcpp.org also usually offers pizza as well. A sponsor will bring in
> pizza, and in exchange they spend a few moments pushing their agenda
> (which is usually recruiting).

We have been offering pizza and beer as well. Perhaps that's what we should be marketing. :)

Ali

On 4/9/2015 2:05 PM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> On 04/09/2015 12:57 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> nwcpp.org also usually offers pizza as well. A sponsor will bring in
>> pizza, and in exchange they spend a few moments pushing their agenda
>> (which is usually recruiting).
>
> We have been offering pizza and beer as well. Perhaps that's what we should be
> marketing. :)

The addition of pizza seems to have doubled the participation at nwcpp.org. It isn't just that people want free pizza, it's after work and they're hungry. If they go home to eat, they're likely to stay home.

You should definitely point out the beer and pizza!

On 10/04/2015 7:03 a.m., Ali Çehreli wrote:
> Fresh or otherwise... :)
>
> We need speakers, topics, ideas, and anything else that you can think of
> to have a useful group. A paragraph of whining follows...
>
> We had a great start in January with one full length presentation by
> Andrei and two lightning talks by deadalnix and another member.
> Unfortunately, we could not have much success since then. I gave a
> presentation in February, which was appreciated by a small number of
> newcomers but we had to cancel the March meetup. :( We are in April now
> and not only there is no speaker yet, nobody even participates the
> discussions at the Meetup page:
>
>    http://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/
>
> Please let me know if you can participate in any way. Otherwise, I am
> (and certainly Shammah is) happy to fill every single month with
> introductions, tutorials, or other cool stuff but we would like to have
> a more lively atmosphere; not a one-man or two-men show.
>
> You can post on the Meetup page or write to me directly at
> acehreli@yahoo.com
>
> Thank you,
> Ali

Perhaps because it is Silicon Valley, it might be worth opening it up via video conferencing to get even more people for e.g. talks.