SHOTGUN RULES FOR RTLW MEETINGS
RULE 1: The RTLW meeting will be on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Thursdays of
each month.
RULE 2: Determination for the location for the RTLW meeting is like calling
shotgun for the front passenger seat of a car. Whoever calls the
location first, wins, and that's where RTLW is going to meet, period.
In case of close calls, "first" is determined by date received by the
list server machine.
RULE 3: A meeting announcement must be posted by email to the
RTLW list, with the word "ANNOUNCEMENT" in the Subject header. It
must define a time, a location (with address), and use the declarative
voice ("We are going to..." not "Would y'all like to go to...?"). It
should not be sent before the previous meeting has happened
(or should have happened).
RULE 4: If you make the announcement, you have to go, you have to be
on time and preferably early, and (if the meeting is in a public
location) you have to make a little sign that says "RTLW" so people
know where they're supposed to sit. If the location has a
barista/bartender/host/other Schelling employee, let them know about
the meetup so they can direct the confused.
RULE 5: If no one makes an announcement, the meeting will not
happen. If nobody cares enough to take responsibility and make an
announcement, and everyone minces around with do-you-think's and
what-about-this's, we are weak and cowardly and do not deserve a
lovely meeting together.
RULE 6: Nobody is making you go to RTLW meetings. Your dialysis machine is
not at the RTLW meeting. You are not a robot of the future who will be
stuck in our dimension forever if you don't attend the RTLW meeting
(we hope.)
If, for some reason, you cannot make it to the RTLW meeting, or you
don't like where it's being held, or Chinese food gives you an upset
tummy, then Don't Go, and make a note in your calendar to yourself
to take some initiative and make the next meetup's announcement.
RULE 7: In case of SEVERE HAZARD -- for example, the originally chosen
venue has burnt to the ground or is on fire at the scheduled time
for the meeting, etc. -- the original organizer should send a new email
according to rule 3, mentioning prominently that it
is a change. This should be in the subject line as something like
"ANNOUNCEMENT: Change of location for [date] RTLW meetup".
For changes made after noon on the day of the meetup, the organizer
must ALSO put a sign and/or a human runner at the original venue to
send people who missed the revised announcement to the new location.
(Not all of us have smartphones!)
That's it. 7 simple rules. The Date Rule, the Shotgun Rule, the Email
Rule, the Organizer Rule, the Have a Spine Rule, the Take Your Lumps
Rule, and the System Crash Rule.
Now, as another reminder, here's the non-binding part.
* Topics/activities are at the discretion of the announcer. General
discussion and socializing is the default topic/activity.
* Good locations for a RTLW meeting will have:
* Food
* Cheap food
* Good food
* Alcoholic beverages
* Non-alcoholic beverages
* Access for minors and people under 21
* Facilities that are gender inclusive and accessible by
people with reduced mobility
* Separate checks
* Seats for 10-15 people
* Room to push tables together, or pull them apart, or other
suitable seating
* Forgiveness for people coming and leaving at will
* Something for vegetarians to eat
* Something for carnivores to eat
* Enough quiet that we can talk
* Enough loudness that we're not a big distraction
* Enough light that we can see the Bayesian networks/causal
diagrams/angry stick figures we're drawing on the backs of napkins
* Nearby parking
* Easy directions
Obviously, there's no requirement that every location have all these
things, and most locations won't. And you are the sole determiner of
where everyone goes: you can call the meeting for a XXX movie
theater or your own home or a cardboard box under the freeway. But
it'd be nice to meet these goals.
* Restaurants and cafes that have been historically supportive of our
cause deserve our business and dollars.
* A good time for meeting is A) late enough that people can get off
work and drive or ride from their region to the region the meeting
is in, and B) not so late that the place is going to close, or
people have to go home for sleep. Think 7-8PM.
* If you think you know a good place to go, announce it. If you don't,
shut up. When people post do-you-think's and what-about-this's, it
clouds the waters and everyone gets confused. So don't do that.
* If for some reason you are far outside the preferred region of the
meeting, you should think about starting an offshoot group and
having separate meetings.
* A good meeting attendee will bring money for their share of food and
drink if they can. If they can't, they will keep their grubby mitts
off the food and drink, unless invited to do otherwise. If they share
from common food or drink (such as pizzas or fries or pitchers of beer),
they will get up and get another pizza or basket of fries or pitcher or
whatever when the current one runs out. They will chip in for what they
ate, and pay for what they ordered, and remember the tip, and round up
rather than down.
* A sample announcement email would look like this:
---8<---
From: Evan Prodromou <evan@debian.org>
To: rtlw@googlegroups.com
Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: RTLW Meeting For First Thursday of April 2002
Date: 24 Mar 2002 08:31:11 -0800
The next RTLW meeting will be held at Munster's Pizza
Parlor on April 4th, 2002 at 1313 Mockingbird Lane in Berkeley at
7:30PM.
Munster's is at the corner of Mockingbird and Yourtown Street on the
Number 17 AC Transit line. It is a 2 block walk from the Northside
BART station.
I will be organizing a PGP key-signing. If you want to participate,
please send me your OpenPGP public key by noon on April 4th.
See you there,
~ESP
---8<---
Note that this message projects authority, it has all important
information, and it does not use a question mark anywhere in the
message or subject line.
* There is no shame in announcing the meeting for someplace that
RTLW has already been before. Heck: if it was good enough
before, it's probably good enough now.
* If you make an announcement, it's entirely possible that NO ONE will
come. This is the risk you run. You have put yourself on the line,
and it's within the realm of likelihood that you will spend the
night lonely and afraid, standing naked in the rain while fire ants
crawl on your legs and chomp your skin and all of the people you
have ever had secret crushes on point at you and laugh and laugh.
In short, it will be the worst night of your entire life, bar
none. If you are prepared for this, any other outcome will be icing
on the cake. (And remember, "within the realm of likelihood" isn't the
same as "likely".)
If you are not prepared for this, and you send a vituperative and
bitter email to the RTLW list on the Day After, you will come off
like a fool, and you will have capped your disastrous event with
a bitter and ugly conclusion. No one has ever actually done this, but
don't be the first.
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Copyright (c) 2016, various RTLW attendees.
Originally (c) 2002 Evan Prodromou.
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under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with the Back-Cover
Texts being this copyright notice. A copy of the license is available
at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt.