[LispSea] charter

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Daniel J Pezely wrote:
> So then, should we simply use the preceding sentence instead of 
> the existing words?
>   

My $0.02: frankly, no.  The existing words are fine.  We shouldn't pull 
punches about what it takes to get things used by businesses.  Some 
techies don't like the words "promotion" and "selling."  But business 
people do, and so do business-oriented techies, which is what you need 
if you're going to promote anything.

Of course, I am biased.  I do not share Dennis' perspective.  I want to 
promote!  I want a paying *JOB* doing Lisp or Scheme or something.  I 
gather signatures because I don't know how to make the technical skills 
I actually have pay in Seattle, plus I'm not interested in moving just 
to solve career problems.  I would never have had the same career 
problems over the past 3 years in the SF Bay Area or in NYC.  The Bay 
Area is much more interested in alternate languages as a business 
practice, not being the backyard of Microsoft.  The NYC Lispers are 
exceedingly organized, to the point of championing many Google Summer Of 
Code projects and so forth.  In terms of strategic trajectory, I really 
hope that Amazon and Google completely clobber Microsoft, and steal all 
their interesting employees, so that we have more paying technological 
options to consider.  Alternately, if Microsoft R&D could only have a 
noticeable effect on the rest of the company....

SeaFunc already does an excellent job of providing academic esoterica, 
interspersed with some practical matters.  I value those things, but 
what SeaFunc does not do at all, is promote.  I'm not sure it can; I 
think the business case for FP "in general" is weak.  It gets stronger 
when you commit to a specific toolchain, but SeaFunc doesn't have any 
core group of people who use 1 toolchain.

I'm all for embracing different people's wants and needs.  Some people 
want to promote.  Some people want to talk shop.  Some people want to 
talk academese.  Some people want to contribute to worldwide Lisp 
projects.  I'm saying:

(1) having a primary focus is fine.  I'm voting for promotion.
(2) including people who want to do other things is fine.
(3) we shouldn't fear the loss of those who insist the primary focus is 
bad.  Having a focus brings benefits that are worth such losses.

My bar for success is "are we as good as NYC Lisp."  That's the metric.  
Whatever it takes to get to that metric, I'm in favor of.  Anything less 
than that, I say, SeaFunc already did it, or will gradually do it.  Aim 
higher.

>     This also means that the group helps individuals raise their 
> level of comfort with the tools and indirectly increase the pool 
> of potential employees.
>
> (Should we just add that to the charter too?)
>   

I move for less focus on charters, and more on creating biosheets of 
specific individuals who want to champion various causes.  Action 
counts.  The group is going to be the sum total of its members' actions, 
no matter what the Charter says.  Networking counts.  It's one thing if 
I'm off on my own tangent.  But what if 3 others share my tangent?

I will put myself down for: Scheme, Chicken Scheme specifically, C FFIs, 
performance, free or cheap natively compiled Common Lisp on Windows, 
OpenGL, AI, and the game industry.

A final word on list traffic.  I think it's cool to hammer out stuff 
online while the group is deciding its direction and preparing for its 
first meetings.  But, experience with SeaFunc has shown that, it's 
better to have people discuss things face-to-face.  For instance, if 
Dennis finds himself unsubscribing, it may be because he gets bored, or 
he gets offended, or because Brandon talks too much, or whatever.  These 
problems don't happen so much in person.  I bet, in person, I could 
probably convince Dennis that his outright distaste for the term 
"selling" is misguided, as far as what LispSea needs to achieve.  Or if 
not, I'd learn an awful lot about the demographic he represents, and its 
likely effect on getting LispSea some legs.  But online discussions, in 
contrast, carry a lot of risk of people getting irritated.  That is to 
say, when people don't share agendas.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every