Ernest brought up an interesting point about the flurry of posts that Bob Hansen and I have enjoyed over the past few days. Ernest said that it looked more like a personal chat than it did a Forum discussion, and he was feeling like we had left him and everybody else out.
As part of our official apology to the Forum, Bob and I thought about the possibility of including the rest of the Forum members in our next chat. Let's call it a multi chat or a virtual meeting, just so we have a name for it.
Would anybody "out there" in the Forum like to have a virtual meeting once per month (or week, or quarter, or whenever) at a specific time where we all get together over the Internet with our favorite beverage in hand and exchange ideas in "real time"? It might be interesting to come up with a time that works for everyone, but we can work on that later.
Because it is free, maybe we would use good old Microsoft Netmeeting. Or maybe, someone out there knows of much better software we could use than good old Netmeeting. (Naaah!) But it has to be something that could be affordable for everyone.
At this meeting, we could all get to know each other better, talk about whatever we want, share a few Macro Scheduler tips and pointers with the group, whatever comes to mind. If we were all in the same city, we would call it the local Macro Scheduler User's Group, but this one could be better than any other User's Group you have ever been to. We could have an agenda every week, always using the same schedule, or we could have no schedule at all, or one meeting could be scheduled and one meeting not scheduled. We can work out all those kinds of details later.
But, to start, I think we have two questions to ask ourselves:
So the purpose of this poll is to ask the first question. If we get the right answer for the first question, we can ask another poll for the second one. Assuming your answer is yes, we should meet, please suggest answers to the following variables (that's Macro Scheduler talk)1 Should we meet over the Internet on a regular basis?
2 How can we do that so that everyone can participate?
Edward1. How many times per month or per year should we meet
2. Who wants to host the meetings and when can they host them
3. Of course we would include Ernest whatever he decides, but do you need to be a member of MJTNET to participate or can just anybody come
4. How long should the meetings last, or should there be different lengths
5. What dates and times would usually work for you, if any, using US Central Time (This is my post, so I get to use my time zone!
6. What kind of software would get the job done best (I think we need a whiteboard, a chat function, camera, speaker and microphone options, remote control might be nice)
7. Anything else I left out that you think is important
8. Do we need permission from MJTNET to do this sort of thing, and if so, does anybody know who we need to speak to
