Folks: Sorry for chiming in late here. Let me give the minutes of the meeting, in brief, first: Chicago Lisp: 2006-12-02 ------------------------------------------ In attendance: John, Michael, Peter, Damien, John Topic: Group's Focus - general trend of feeling was that we should remain a Lisp group - no need to focus on Lisp entirely, we're open to talks and projects that aren't necessarily Lisp specific * that said, most of us are here because we have a particular fondness for Lisp itself * for this reason, we will remain on the Chicago Lisp mailing list for the foreseeable future - try to attract commercial entities, we want to hear of the Lisp jobs! Topic: Meetings - small physical meetings to occur in tandem with the Chicago LUG until we're able to establish our own time/date/space * this will be directly dependent upon how well we reach out to other communities * we should work on fostering a community of folks, and establishing ourselves as independent to the LUG - we'll need interesting presentations to make the meetings have purpose and to attract new memberes * possible presentations ideas: + discussion/explanation of small projects that members are working on + talks regarding aspects of Lisp that were ahead of their time (such as aspect-oriented programming) Topic: Projects - possible collaborative work at Lisp Gardeners - work on setting up a website with a Lisp back-end Topic: Todo - acquire group domain name - gather info/requirements for a website that employs Lips on the backend (AllegroServe, mod_lisp?) - reach out to other dev groups, acquire interest - work on contacting interesting speakers that will help us attract members ------------ SNIP --------------- So, the meeting lasted about 20 or 30 minutes, and we had some nice discussion amongst ourselves. I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone and working on interesting code. Damien Kick wrote:
There is a PDF file version of his presentation but I forgot to jot down the URL for it.
That URL is: http://www.jquigley.com/files/beginners-lisp.tar.bz2
Apparently the space being used for the CLUG meetings would be available for other chicago-lisp gatherings.
Indeed, let's plan on meeting in tandem with the Chicago LUG, at least at the outset. When we have some more members and have had time to think things through, we'll probably be able to establish ourselves independently, with our own meeting date, time and place. Or, indeed, perhaps we stay closely aligned with the LUG for the foreseeable future. This leaves open the possibility of interesting cross-group pollination. I'm open to either, or other, possibilities.
if everyone was mostly interested in lisp in particular or rather a broader range of topics, for instance functional languages such as Scheme or ML. There was a bit of difference of opinion on this topic and I think it might still be a bit of an open question.
I think the general feeling is that we should remain as the Chicago Lisp. I'm happy with that, though I do recognize the problems associated with a group becoming 'pigeon-holed;' if you meet long enough, there's only so many topics one can discuss about a certain technology. The way I see it, the group could also become The Chicago Lisp and: - Programming Language Group (ala, Lambda The Ultimate) - Artificial Intelligence Group (ala, AAIA) - Functional Language Group (ala, RHS was to become?) I personally like the sound of the Chicago Lisp and Programming Language Group. What I just realized: if that were acronym-ized, it might become ChiLPL (which could be pronounced "chill pill" =) I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say on this. Ideally, we get this resolved ASAP. I'd like for us to be galvanized behind a definitive name in the very short term. We need a domain name, which I'm happy to fork over the $20 for if that's agreeable with everyone. One suggestion
was that the group might want to start host a web-site, perhaps as an excuse for a group project. A wiki as well as cliki <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLiki> and AllegroServer <http://allegroserve.sourceforge.net/> were discussed.
Another idea was to adopt a project from Common Lisp Gardeners
I thought this was a particularly well-conceived idea, and I'm already on their mailing list. I invite other Chicago Lispniks to join me there. This email is already plenty long. I've got a lot of other things to say, but I'll explore those ideas in other, more concise emails. Thanks again everyone! Regards, John Quigley