[Balug-admin] Random (useful?) suggestion for having (slightly) more timely meetings, and other suggestions/ideas

[Xavier]

Michael Paoli wrote:
> Other random idea: try to have folks seated at tables with 5 or 6
> people per table at least "initially" (when and around the time most
> folks arrive).  This would allow us to better accommodate stragglers
> (if I'm not mistaken, I think tables comfortably accommodate 8, and
> squeeze up to 10 or maybe a very crowded 11, but 8 is a much more
> comfortable fit).

Yeah, the Spinal Tap seating method (but this table goes to 11!) needs 
to be strongly avoided. Unless Linus is stopping by I'm generally a 
proponent of limiting tables to 8 and dropping a dish to keep it fair 
for the restaurant (if they have that complaint). It also covers the 
straggler aspect by allowing overloaded tables and encouraging the use 
of more tables (again boosting capacity margins in the case of 
"attendees = (tables X tablesize) + (a couple more)" situations.) while 
near-ensuring a table doesn't have to be turned up to 11 as long as 
there are more than 11 people at the meeting to start with.

Predictive underloading of tables early on is also a good idea if it can 
be implemented. But I usually get sidetracked on lazy-susan 
optimizations (due to frequent stack overflows and the processing 
overhead of parallel opportunistic out-of-order accesses).

I now take back any complaints I may have made about wordy messages from 
other people. :-)