Re: [InterLUG] Morning vs Evening

Our users groups here in Western Michigan have met in the morning since I first began attending in 1983 or 84. The advantages that we have seen are:
1) They don't take away from personal time. I'm not against people investing their own time in career development/advancement etc but with my son who is too young to drive on the high school swim team and many other commitments evenings are a very tough sell.
2) If you break away from work before you ever get to work you have a much higher probability of pulling it off. When you get to work you often get buried in the blizzard that work can so easily become. This is likely why I've never seen a successful afternoon meeting time.
3) Meeting places are easily available in the morning. We've had no problems finding places and parking is usually better too than those evening meetings where other things are also occurring.
4) You can't have an 'adult beverage'. OK Maybe this one goes either way :-) but your group certainly won't be liable for anyone who does something unfortunate because of one too many.
5) We don't have the traffic problems here that Alison mentions but even in little Grand Rapids you can certainly tell the difference in your commute between 'prime time' and off hours. It does matter.

Now with tight budgets and fewer folks being able to leave town for conferences it seems that asking the boss for 1/2 day (or less) once a month for education with near zero other costs shouldn't be a tough sell. Even if you have to make up the time you could do that in that same week by coming in early or leaving late. I would hope it doesn't come to that but some bosses don't 'get it'.

- Larry

On 2/9/2010 10:39 AM, Alison Butterill wrote:

Having been the speaker at breakfast events, I can say that they are very
popular with many customers.

As an example, in New Zealand, I have done many breakfast meetings in
various cities. They begin at 7:30, the speaker goes for 60 - 90 minutes
or so and most are back at their desk by 9:30. The participants avoid the
worst traffic getting there and avoid the worst traffic leaving to go to
their offices. And companies do not object to a slightly later start to
the day.

Obviously there may be other issues with early meetings, but it does
provide a good alternative.

Alison Butterill
Power Systems Application Development Offering Mgr
Sr Consulting Certified IT Specialist - WebSphere, App Development and IBM i
Power Systems, IBM Corporation
(905) 413-2039