Howdy, Does it make any sense to turn up at one of these meetings without speaking German? If so I'd quite like to pop in some time. I'd like to have gone to yesterday's meeting but I need about two weeks notice to get a cheap Ryanair flight from Stockholm. Cheers, Luke
Hi Luke,
Does it make any sense to turn up at one of these meetings without speaking German?
I'm just back from the meeting that took place yesterday. Jim Newton's description of his company was in English, my talk (about persistence techniques) was in English, Hans Huebner's talk (about some ways he has used persistence for his applications) was half German half English (he started in German but when I asked questions in English he switched to English) and Pascal Costanza's talk was in German. The general conversation was also a nice mix of English and German, with a couple of Dutch sentences in between. I think everybody in the room was comfortable with English. So my answer is: yes, don't worry if you don't speak German. The best way to guarantee that some of the talks are in English is by giving a talk yourself, of course ;-) There were about 20 people present yesterday (from the Netherlands, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and probably a few other places in Germany). I think it was a great meeting with lots of interesting discussions. And it's always nice to see the faces behind names that you only know from the Internet. Regards, Arthur
On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 09:54:36 +0200, Arthur Lemmens <alemmens@xs4all.nl> wrote:
I'm just back from the meeting that took place yesterday. Jim Newton's description of his company was in English, my talk (about persistence techniques) was in English, Hans Huebner's talk (about some ways he has used persistence for his applications) was half German half English (he started in German but when I asked questions in English he switched to English) and Pascal Costanza's talk was in German.
The general conversation was also a nice mix of English and German, with a couple of Dutch sentences in between. I think everybody in the room was comfortable with English.
So my answer is: yes, don't worry if you don't speak German.
I second that. I think it'd be no problem at all to have an English-only meeting (except for the occasional "Ist noch Kaffee da?") if there are enough non-native speakers. (For a suitable value of "enough" - I think one or two guests are enough to switch to English... :)
The best way to guarantee that some of the talks are in English is by giving a talk yourself, of course ;-)
Yep. It'd be great if you (Luke) could make it to the next meeting and talk about, say, SLIME. Or maybe even better give a live demo of how you actually use it.
There were about 20 people present yesterday (from the Netherlands, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and probably a few other places in Germany).
Cologne, Oldenburg, Kiel...
I think it was a great meeting with lots of interesting discussions. And it's always nice to see the faces behind names that you only know from the Internet.
I'm not sure if we'll have that many people for the next meeting but who knows. Lisp is definitely not dead, it just smells funny... :) Cheers, Edi.
Edi Weitz <edi@agharta.de> writes:
Yep. It'd be great if you (Luke) could make it to the next meeting and talk about, say, SLIME. Or maybe even better give a live demo of how you actually use it.
I haven't really had a chance to /use/ SLIME yet, but I'll try to wing it all the same. :-) -Luke
participants (5)
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André Thieme -
Arthur Lemmens -
Edi Weitz -
Jim Newton -
Luke Gorrie