Fair enough. I'll reword my call for registration. How about that? "Note: ITA Software, a fine employer of Lisp hackers (disclosure: I work there), is kindly sponsoring a dinner for our Monthly Boston Lisp Meeting. Dinner will be offered to all who come listen to the talks. However, so as to make our ordering process easier, we appreciate if you register by email to boston-lisp-meeting-register at common-lisp.net with a list of attendees and any food taboos. Your identities will be kept confidential and not transmitted to anyone, not even our kind sponsor." As a matter of fact, I have outsourced registration and don't know myself the identities of who registers, only the head count. In any case, thanks for the feedback. PS: please keep discussion on the boston-lisp mailing-list and not the cross-posted mailing-lists. My bad for having made it all too easy to reply to too many mailing-lists. [ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them. -- Alan Perlis 2008/6/6 Neil Van Dyke <neil@neilvandyke.org>:

I almost mentioned the food RSVP thing myself, so I'm glad Kent mentioned it.

The main issue is that registering for food was a hurdle and a commitment, which meant that, being an engineer/process type, I deferred planning to attend until I was confident I'd be available and could RSVP.

I suppose a secondary issue for some people is that they're averse to "being on lists" (no LISP pun intended). I think part of the success of getting reclusive LISPers on the "boston-lisp-announce" email list was guaranteeing them they wouldn't be hassled.

In case of Boston Lisp Meeting, with the sponsor of the food being ITA, there might have been some ambiguity as to who sees the list, as opposed to just a headcount. Probably anyone who has talked to independent Boston-area IT recruiters in the last couple years is well aware of their aggressive and sometimes sly pitching of ITA, so the term "ITA" might be associated in their minds with wanting to be *removed* from lists. :)

Kent M Pitman wrote at 06/06/2008 11:29 PM:

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The previous Boston Lisp Meeting on May 28th was

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a success despite only 34 participants.

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Could be the light rain, or maybe people are intimidated

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by the high concentration of elite lisp hackers

I'm rarely intimidated by either of these, but, FWIW, it could be the advanced registration for food.