General Meetings

It has been a long time since the last "General Meeting".  General
Meetings were discontinued due to lack of productivity in a number of
areas.  The weekly "Hack Night" has higher frequency, routine attendance
by (most) core members and contributors, and focus on actually getting
stuff done, rather than answering frequently asked questions to curious
Johnny come lately's.

Some of the original goals of these meetings, among many, were:

* Drum up interest
* Gather members to create critical mass
* Network with do'ers and gatekeepers of high up places
* Showcase technical items/howtos/etc
* Provide network updates
* Build our network/nodes/etc

We did a lot of the above, except the last item.  While we did have
regulars, the general mass of attendees  were new and never made it past
the first night of class.   It seemed that everybody on square one the
following month.  This made it very difficult to naturally progress in a
technical fashion.  When it came to talk about routing protocols, some
asked what exactly WiFi was.  While newcomers were welcomed, it seemed
that we were trying to accomplish two mutually exclusive goals:
Teaching WiFi 101 and performing highly technical operational tasks.

Finally, due to various factors, the general meeting ran out of steam.
There was no more General Meeting, however, HackNights continued to be
very successful even to this very day.  

People occasionally ask why we do not do General Meetings.  Is this
something that people want to see happen again?  What would the focus
be, and in what way would it be productive?  With what frequency?
(Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly)?  A once-a-year party?

Lets not worry about the place, time, or who will host it.  If interest
is great enough, I will take care of those matters myself.

- Casey



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