Greetings, folks.

After a few month hiatus, the Online CFMeetup is back on. I’ll be posting a new meeting in a few minutes.

Before that, though, I wanted to offer this note to say a few things, about the recent past and the group’s future.

First, I want to explain that the delay since our last session has simply been for a lack of presenters.  As such, I want to offer, as always, a call for speakers. If you may have presented a session at any other user group or conference in recent months (or have one coming up), or know someone who has and you’d like to encourage them, or if you have any interest in offering a new talk, we are always in need of presenters. Anything related to CF is welcome: new or old topic, beginner or advanced topic.

Second, we will change our scheduled somewhat. Previously, we were always open to having sessions on any Thursdays at either noon or 6p US Eastern time (with the hope to serve needs of speakers and attendees in various timezones across the US and the world). That flexibility was nice, but I suspect it sometimes led speakers to not see a need to commit since there were virtually unlimited opportunities to present.

So in the new schedule, we will change to meeting just twice a month, still on Thursdays, but alternating their times: on the second Thursday of each month, we will schedule to meet in the noon US Eastern slot, and on the fourth Thursday we will schedule to meet in the 6pm US Eastern slot.

About this change, while setting a maximum of 2 presentations a month may seem a drop from the previous possibility of up to 8-10 sessions per month, in actual fact we had an average of just over 2 sessions per month over the past 2 years. So assuming we do fill both slots each month going forward, this will continue the same rate of sessions.

I do hope the new schedule will help speakers regard the slots as more precious. I hope it may also help us more effectively announce the schedule of coming sessions more in advance. That said, if we end up without a speaker in a slot, I’ll be prepared to step in and offer a talk on any of many topics, rather than have none at all.

We will begin this new schedule starting with our next session, being held in that 4th week 6pm slot, on May 23rd. More about that in the meeting announcement to come in the next note. (Though I had planned to step in to speak this week, in that second week slot, I’ll be attending a funeral for a friend so cannot.)

If you may have thoughts or feedback on the schedule or the group, feel free to reply to this note. I hope to continue the Online CFMeetup’s bringing value to the CF community in presenting topics and speakers of interest.