- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:23:54 +0200
- To: "Eric Miller" <em@w3.org>, semantic-web@w3.org
On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:49:52 +0200, Eric Miller <em@w3.org> wrote: > ... what I don't know is the best way they have found to manage, > organize, start such groups. > > The next question people ask me is 'how can i start one?' and for this > I'd really like to provide them some guidance. Are people using meetup > [1]? is there something better? What have people found that works, what > doesn't? Hi Eric, I've used meetup to find some groups that happened to be in places I was going, which I thnk is useful. Any tool that helps people to put down markers is good - it would indeed be nice to have some RDF tools that did this - or even see meetup provide RDF capability with nice interfaces to it. In other cases just casual calls on mailing lists can work ad hoc. On the other hand a lot of what drives any group of people to hang together is about general social interaction. Having a style of communication that doesn't make people feel excluded, but gives a sense of belonging. Having a place and time for meeting that suits people. Having something to talk about. Like mailing lists, if you don't get a response most people will just stop bothering... Perhaps one of the very biggest things is having somebody who is prepared to turn up every time to every meeting, welcome people, answer the same questions from another person, and ensure that somehow the meeting seems worth returning to. Not an easy job, and not one I know how to explain - although I recognise it when I see it... > Eventually, I think it would be cool to see each of these groups publish > a bit or RDF describing themselves and plot them on a map [2]. We actually discussed this at the Melbourne Meetup group meeting, and it would indeed be cool. I'd like to see physical communities developing some of this stuff and then showing it off (but where? how?). There are also neat tools out there. Blessings on the FOAF world for making some tools that make it easy to start this kind of thing with a useful example or 3. cheers Chaals -- Charles McCathieNevile Fundacion Sidar charles@sidar.org +61 409 134 136 http://www.sidar.org
Received on Sunday, 17 April 2005 10:24:02 UTC