Last week I posted a link about Remote Meetups, but, as it sometimes happens, it didn’t stop there. The basic principle was appealing to me. It’s true that we don’t all live in the Bay area or in New York. Having high quality speakers in meetups is hard when you live in a small city or a remote country. And this is exactly what that initiative tries to address.

So I jumped in and had some talk with Franze. The result is that the GreenRuby meetup we will have this friday will also be remote. Some people will attend physically, some people will come virtually using the Bigmarker platform on the RemoteMeetup account.

Those events usually are based on a format including a presentation followed by interactions. My plan is to go nuts and try a full-social format, with no presentation at all, jumping directly to the interactions. It’s going to be highly experimental and may lead to failure, but it certainly won’t kill any kitten in the process so I think we are safe.

The mix between physical and remote event is the challenging part. We may try the usage of mobile phones to make local people become remote participants (but it seems to be IOs only for now). I will get an iPad ready for easier floating access, that can be fun.

You are welcome to join, either online or irl. I heard Gandi, the physical host and my employer, is going to fill up the fridge with hundred of various beverages and won’t mind us to help reduce that quantity.