Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Dropping meetings -- or, making choices

When I took this leap from the safe employer position into contracting, I built my network of contacts in part by attending meetings of technical professionals.

I am now in a position to evaluate those meetings, and I have chosen to drop some of them.

The local Baltimore Linux user group was an easy one to drop. The group has seen a decline in its membership (or at least attendance at meetings) and they may be shutting down. The causes of the decline are two: poor leadership in the group, and a reduced need for assistance with Linux.

The latter is particularly problematic. When Linux was a strange new thing that required expertise, a user group made sense. Members could support each other and share information. Today's Linux distros are quite good at detecting hardware and correcting problems. (And there is the world-wide-web for information.) A user group must be based on more than sharing technical knowledge for a popular operating system.

The not-so-local Linux user group (a separate group from the local Linux user group) is also on the "drop" list. Not due to declining membership or low value; this user group has good leadership, provides informative speakers, and maintains an active membership. My cause to depart is a pragmatic one: they have moved their meetings and the new location is farther than I prefer to travel. I had to play games with the car, staging it at a different train station in the morning, to attend. Now even that does not allow me to attend in time.

The third group that I am dropping is the cloud computing group. I am sorry to stop attending; they had good presentations and interesting members. Their old location was in Virginia but near a metro stop. The new location is further out in Virginia and far away from metro stops.

Letting go of these user groups gives me time in three evenings every month. I plan to use that time in other user groups, preferably ones closer to home.