Let us face reality

Cees de Groot cg at cdegroot.com
Thu Jan 27 17:34:27 UTC 2005


On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 11:54:40 +0100, stéphane ducasse  
<ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:

> Another way to solve a bit this problem would be to organize a real  
> meeting point every year in Europe and in the US.

I for one are usually not in a position to fund travel for Squeak; neither  
time-wise nor money-wise. Maybe, now that I am making actual money with  
it, this changes. But I think - alas - that most of us are doing this as a  
hobby which sorts of limits travel possibilities.

Is that bad? Given all the more-or-less succesful open source projects  
I've been in where I never met anyone, I wouldn't necessarily say so. IRC,  
mail, websites are of course crutches when compared to personal  
communications, but they seem to work reasonably well between reasonable  
people. And, given your experience with trying to organize real life  
meetings, probably all we've got for the foreseeable future. It's very  
suboptimal, I know that, but I think it's a fact of life.

(really, I'd *love* to see a yearly Squeak meeting take place with  
hundreds of Squeakers; the best thing about my Java time surely was the  
yearly trip to JavaOne. But I don't think it's going to happen anytime  
soon, and until that time I going to have make do with visiting people  
whenever I have time or whenever the occasion arises. I met some Squeakers  
in Berlin when I had some event I forgot there (ah - Zope BBQ, just  
remembered before pressing Send ;)); I'm glad Avi lives in Utrecht now;  
and next time I'm in .CH and not preoccupied with motorcycling through the  
mountains I'd love to go for a beer with you guys in Bern. I cherish such  
moments, and they help a lot in subsequent cooperation-over-the-net).



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