Location..

Sat Oct 8 22:24:32 PDT 2005

Quoting Jennifer Davis (sigje at sigje.org):

> So I've heard from people time and again that BayLISA meetings are located 
> too far South to easily get to.  So in planning events outside of BayLISA 
> general meetings I try to find places further North.. ie Mountain View, 
> San Francisco..
> 
> Where are the people interested in BayLISA events really located?  Is 
> Cupertino great fine and dandy?
> 
> Added to that, when are the best times to have events.. evenings or 
> weekends?

You can drive yourself mad, trying to get a good answer to those
questions.

Days/times....

Conventional wisdom about day choice, filtered through local
workaholism, is:  Monday evening, many people will be frazzled at the
end of a busy first day of work.  Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
evenings are considered good.  Friday, people are assumed to want free
or with their families.  Saturday morning is assumed bad:  People are
assumed to want to sleep in.  Saturday afternoon and evening are assumed
good, though best for somewhat laid-back events.  Sundays seem
unpopular:   I'm guessing that people are assumed to be unavailable for
various reasons.  (Might be true, might not.  Few groups have tested the
assumption.)

Ask people which night is best, and you tend to run straight into
sampling bias.  E.g., ask on the Internet, and people will weigh in who
won't attend in-person meetings at all, but have opinions anyway.  Try
to fix that problem by asking people attending a Tuesday in-person
event, and (of course) the overwhelmning majority will respond that they
like Tuesday evenings.  (After all, they came; the Tuesday-haters mostly
didn't.)

Locations....

Hold meetings in Cupertino, and the two guys in Burlingame will claim
you'd do better to move north.  Hold them in Redwood City, and the two
participants from Morgan Hill will advise going south.  One way to find
out is move and see what happens -- but then you should wait a few
months:  Some former regulars will cease attending, but you'll also
slowly pick up people for whom the new location is better.  (Any move
introduces "friction" over the shart term:  All else being equal, keep
changes of venue/time to a minimum.)

In short, it's a muddle, and ultimately has to come down to someone's
judgement about which area to serve and what evening or afternoon to
stake out.  In an ideal world, you _would_ be able to survey who our
intended constituency are and where they live & work, then pick spots
and regular times that work for them, but I'm not able to envision
offhand any real-world heuristic that approximates that very well.
(If someone else can think of one, though, good!)

-- 
Cheers,               Chip Salzenberg: "Usenet is not a right."
Rick Moen            Edward Vielmetti: "Usenet is a right, a left, a jab,
rick at linuxmafia.com                     and a sharp uppercut to the jaw.
                                        The postman hits!  You have new mail."