First, I want to thank you and Sam for running it. I know it requires a lot of work, and I'm sorry I've missed a few sessions. I can only speak for myself, but there's two things that stand out for me that get in the way of my own attendance: The schedule. Monday night is a tough night for me to come downtown. I know for some people Monday night might be ideal - so maybe some form of alternating days? Do one on Monday, one of Friday, then repeat? Or take a survery and see which night(s) work best for most people. The topics. This one is harder for y'all, as organizers, to change but it's part of it. The topics are generally web dev focused, but that's not what I am interested in, mostly, since I do backend work almost exclusively. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, for all I know. I know, too, that this is a case of "be the change you want to see", but I am under some outside constraints that prevent me from giving talks very easily. But I will try and make the effort to put one on, soon. Maybe moving to every two months will alleviate the talk situation just because we only have so much bandwidth - we're a small group so that means the "talk" workload is less spread out than in larger groups. Online meetups are another option. I'm not personally a huge fan but they do solve the "going downtown on a Monday" problem above so maybe sprinkling them in would at least alleviate the issue while not getting rid of in-person time completely.

If we stopped meeting monthly, I think we'd have to give up our Capital Factory spot. I'm not sure if we could do bimonthly. Maybe Sam can comment. That's the main reason I suggested online meetings for the things with talks. It would also open up our speaker and attendee pool. If we wanted to do the occasional meeting in person we could possibly see if Cameron's office is available or find other options. I'm just making some suggestions at this point to see where peoples heads are

yeah capital factory constraints are difficult. I’m a fan of alternating months of a “regular talk” and then finding a spot where we can have beers and nachos and “talk shop”. Those are often fun where war stories come up organically and are usually my favorite. With such a small pool its difficult to pull great talks repeatedly (but we’ve had more than our fair share)

i’m also a fan of maybe trying out “homework assignments”. Let’s discuss state machine designs and talk about how we all impelemented a different version to solve a problem. Or maybe a toy virtual machine to solve a problem (i want to understand the VM that powers sqlite)

and want to repeat jake’s comment that the work you and sam do is absolutely appreciated and is the only reason there’s an Austin Clojure meetup at all

I am open to any of the options. I missed Monday, but for sure if we want to keep CapFac, I think it’s an every month thing. It does seem like people would have easier time with weekend meetings. Those could be in person or virtual. As far as in person, the thing with that is that not many places offer free rooms with TV’s to project onto. Anyone know places that do have them available?

I don't see any scenario whereby we continue meeting monthly at Capital Factory. We'd need a big influx of people to get back to a size that can support that.

The small size of the group could work in our favor there, as we don't really need a projector, right? It's ideal for sure but I think with 4-5 people it's reasonable to just turn the laptop around and use a remote to advance slides. For active coding examples we could use a screen share only room so the only real constraint is a place that has enough room for us and good WiFi

The Austin library has rooms with TVs, I think. I don't know the process for acquiring them.

i’ve heard the library is quite nice. i’ve never been though

parking might be difficult though

I’m open to whatever the group decides. We’ll have to decide by mid-November as that’s when Capital Factory contracts go out again, so if we aren’t going to continue there, we will need to tell them.

We've done a code-up or two at the library. It can be hard to reliably get a very specific time like "the second monday at 7" but otherwise it is pretty easy to manage.

I’ll try to look into if any co-working places have free conference rooms on weekends.

If anyone wants to help that’d be great too.

I’ve missed the last couple-- too bad, I wanted to hear about tailwind. I’ll miss the next couple of sessions, as well, but will be back after that. Anyway, to add my 2 cents. I like the idea of alternating months between: 1. Topic talks (one or several short one, finish by 9pm) 2. Open-ended discussion, “homework assignments” and so on If #2 is a short session and then we take it to the bar, that at least helps us keep the CF space. Also, I like Jake’s idea of alternating day of he week to accommodate more people. Not sure if that would work for CF, though? And again, just my 2 cents, but not a fan of “remote”. The point of the group is “local proximity”. Video calls defeat the point.

CF contracts are for a specific night of the week, so alternating days wouldn’t work for that. The alternating what the meeting is about idea can work though for sure One time a formal talk or talks, and the next time a discussion/code-up or whatever.

It's worth asking if they would be ok with a bimonthly schedule. The off month could be on another night if we really wanted.

I’ll ask them