I know a fair number (definitely 3, possibly 3 more) of boston lispers who were at railsconf, so I don't know that it's all that big a deal. I'll be there for the next one.
That said, having had the privilege of watching Heow Eide-Goodman work his magic (6 years of strong attendance without sponsorship and with only 6ish talks/year!), I can say with total confidence that going out drinking after the tech talks is an absolute necessity for the longevity of the group. Once one's head has been filled with the sublime, the sublime must be bludgeoned into longterm memory with a few dozen beers. Then those local lispers who are alcoholics can serve as a skeleton on which the rest of the organization can be hung.
On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Greg Pfeil greg@technomadic.org wrote:
rob levy wrote:
The previous Boston Lisp Meeting on May 28th was a success despite only 34 participants. Those who didn't come missed two very interesting talks. I welcome email suggestions for things that will make you come: maybe shorter sessions with only one speaker? In any case, many thanks to all those who came.
Could be the light rain, or maybe people are intimidated by the high concentration of elite lisp hackers with their wide-ranging knowledge (just kidding, maybe). I find it pretty inspiring and informative to listen to (and where appropriate, talk with) people whose accomplishments in my favorite programming language are much greater than anything I have done at this point.
Yeah, I don't know that anything should be changed. I missed the last meeting (much to my chagrin) only because I was out of town on vacation.
One thing I was thinking about that would be really interesting would be a
talk about Lisp Machines, either by someone who developed some of the software or hardware, or by someone who just knows a lot about them. Even better if it involves a live demonstration of one of the machines.
There are a lot of people in the area who are qualified to speak about Lisp Machines. It's something I would like to hear about as well. I will make a few requests.
On a similar note, I'm curious about the various projects to create a
kernel in Lisp and a Lisp OS on top of it. I don't know if anyone in the Movitz project lives around here, but if not that then a different Common Lisp or Scheme OS project by someone local would be interesting.
The author of the SBCL-OS project has been to some of the meetings. Maybe he'll treat us to a talk at some point :)
Thanks & looking forward to more great talks,
Me too!
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