BayXP July Meeting
Last night, I attended the BayXP July Meeting at eGain, the first BayXP meeting for me. As I was parking my car, a couple of guys were approaching the building. I am sure they saw me, but did not hold the door open. Etiquette is not necessarily a strong-point of engineers, but I was doubly surprised to find the door locked and had to bang on it for attention. Seems that might deter folks from attending the meeting. Of course, coming to a place of work after hours, I guess this can be expected. Maybe having someone watching for people would help.
This most pleasant part of the evening was finding pizza (including veggie!) and soda available for the attendees at no charge. As the introduction part of the agenda, I thought this would be time to mix and mingle. It was more a sit and stuff your face with very little conversation. People came in and out, and I attempted to make some small talk, quite a feet amongst any set of geeks.
The presentation started without fanfare. As in, the presenter was asked to get started. Doing just this, the presenter slowly rose up and started talking. He gave some background of himself and by this time I realized I would be waiting until the end to escape. The talk was stilted and dry, the slides either full of text or ambiguous, and the conversation lacking. I played a game of not looking at the slides to stay engaged in what the presenter was saying, but would find myself slipping in to my own thoughts and wondering if anyone would notice me slipping under the table and crawling out the door. I would then read the slide, and then look back at the presenter and try to figure out where he was in relation to the slide.
There was a little discussion at the end to clarify some of the presentation, and a drawing for Mike Cohn’s training in San Jose in October, which I considered a bribe for enduring until the end. After that, I jumped up and ran out without saying goodbye. Hopefully this is not a typical meeting for the group and I do plan on attending again next month to see.
