RE: tlug: Meeting data?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

Perhaps this is going too far on this thread, but I think it is
important to the membership at large and should not be redirected to
-admin or -advocacy without warning.  Also, some of my statements
should be followed to -admin and others to -advocacy.  :-)

I will try to redirect followups to -admin but majordomo still munged
Reply-To headers at last test.

>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen Carter <carter@example.com> writes:

    Stephen> I was disappointed that the presentation of LabView was
    Stephen> in Japanese

Say what?  I'm sorry I missed it!

    Stephen> I wonder if a distinguishing feature of TLUG isn't that
    Stephen> we do our meetings and have presentations in English.

    Stephen> We've never defined this point, and it may well be that
    Stephen> we don't want to distinguish ourselves this way. If we

I hope we do not.  But then, for technical purposes I'm fluent enough.

I also have a more public-spirited reason for preferring that we
sponsor more Japanese-language talks: it is clear to me from recent
discussions with a few OSS leaders that they don't much know or care
what's happening in Japan (and similarly other kanji-using nations).
This is a purely economic response to lack of I18N-ready Japanese
contributions and the difficulty of learning the language (and many
OSS leaders are multilingual and have paid their dues in that area).

I hope that we can contribute a meeting place where language
difficulties will be treated with the understanding they deserve.  We
all know that Japanese hackers are contributing enthusiastically to
many projects, but it would be nice if this could be made
higher-profile to the OSS community at large.

(I have a couple anecdotes that indicate that the barrier is not
limited to OSS, but harms development at places like Sun and IBM as
well.)

    Stephen> will have Japanese presentations, then I think it would
    Stephen> be good to clearly announce the language ahead of time so
    Stephen> people can make decisions about attending

This is a good idea.  I hope that non-Japanese-speakers will come
anyway, and that presenters will attempt to provide flashy demos that
don't require language skill to understand.  (Sorry, I know I
personally didn't even come close ;-)  But the consumer-protection
notice is essential.

For fairness, we should tag our English talks as well (I would prefer
that talks in Japanese not be marked as "second-class") and I would
hope that in general either speakers will try to field questions in
either language or interpretation be provided for questions.
(Language of response would be speaker's choice, of course.)

I wish we could be catholic about other languages, but that would
restrict audience too much, I suppose.

-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences       Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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