... The appearance of conforming gets you a long way. If you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways ... you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of needless trouble. - Richard Hamming, You And Your Research
I've been involved with the Milwaukee .NET community for a couple years now. We've had some great presentations, and we've all given up time from our families & lives to help make it happen.
We had over 100 people at our meeting (Web 2.0) last night. The presentation was thrown together over about 5 days by Larry Clarkin, who graciously stepped up when our scheduled speaker had to bail on us... The presentation went well for the most part.
About 15 minutes into the presentation, some dude standing up in the back decided that now was the time to argue over a few points... valid or not, these points came out as aggressive and argumentative. Our audience started getting frustrated, some left... and we decided the conversation should happen outside the meeting. A few of us went out into the lobby with this guy, where we took a verbal beating (even a little physical) before things calmed down enough that we could sit and talk like civil people.
Some points:
- We're a user group, run by volunteers, with presentations made by volunteers.
- Speakers come in with an agenda, usually around 90 minutes long.
- Comments, even some friendly discussion are always welcome, but
- Arguments and in-depth discussion should happen afterwards, or over e-mail
- A room full of geeks isn't the place to go if you're looking for a fight
- If the community isn't what you want, fix it in 1 of 2 ways:
- Don't go... start one using your model, change the world.
- Check your freaking ego and provide helpful, constructive help to the group.
Anyway, for those of you there, this was a first... and hopefully the only such display you'll see at our meetings. We're sorry.
Thanks again to Larry Clarkin for speaking on short notice.
Print | posted on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 5:31 PM