We have moved around quite a bit over the ten years we've been meeting. Fom bookstores to coffee shops to the alehouse where we've been for the last few years. One thing we've never really had was a place where we could easily share a presentation. We've done it a time or two, at a Panera or at the Bear Rock, but having to lug in equipment, find an outlet, and compete with the overhead loudspeaker and piped in music has made for less than stellar sharing at times. It was easy when the group was 5-10, but with the high visibility and growing popularity of mobile applications and hardware, we've got a lot of potential members who just won't get much from sitting in a restaurant chatting over pie. They want information, they want and need to concentrate and actually learn something. And, despite my love for sharing over a pint in a loud, public place, I enjoy this type setting, too.
Chuck Nall mentioned a few meetings back getting into the McKinney space at American Tobacco in Durham, and I encouraged him to follow up. He met with the folks there, and we're now on their calendar on the third Monday at 7 pm for the foreseeable future.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
So, what does this mean for the group? Well, first off, we won't need to poll the group about whether or not we're meeting. Unless there's a weather-related emergency or actual armed insurrection in progress, you can safely assume that we will meet. You are still encouraged to bring any and all manner of gadgets to share, but, due to the overwhelming success and requests from friends and members of other groups, I am changing the focus of the group, yet again, to be more iOS centered. It's been moving that way for a while, and I can't think of many meetings in the last few years where everyone there didn't have some type of iOS device - either iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.
Don't think that we're not interested in other tablets, phones, or the oddities we find on craigslist or eBay, though. While the main focus will be iOS, we (and by we, I mean I) will still encourage and bring in folks who have any type of portable tech. It's too rich a field to not keep up with it.
While we still have a presence on yahoo groups and this blog, I have added us as a meeting attached to the Triangle Macintosh Users' Group on meetup.com. This was not strictly out of a financial thing (it costs $12 a month to host a group on meet up, but additional meetings are free for existing groups), but also to bring those members more into contact with TAPIT. There are a lot of iOS users in TMUG who do not avail themselves of the resource that TAPIT is, and I want to change that.
Also, being able to have a real presentation means we can start getting more input from others who really want to get into iOS in a big way. By this I mean developers and programmers, and by that I mean swag - something that used to be a part of every meeting but died with the tech bubble back in the early '00's.
So, rather than heading to the Carolina Ale House next month, grab a white bag of grub from a fast food joint and head over to the new location, ready to be involved in discussion and actually learning, rather than shooting the bull. We'll do some of that afterwards at Mellow Mushroom or Tyler's or something, I'm sure!
