by Daniel Feller, Citrix
It has been a few days since the latest Minneapolis/St. Paul CUGC meeting and something interesting has happened over the life of the this local CUGC group.
For the first two or three meetings, we met at a local office building. It was awesome because it was a 10 minute drive for me, which meant no rush hour traffic. The room had rows of desks all facing the speaker in front. Overall, the venue was fine. We had room, we had projectors and we had food/drinks brought in.
But something was missing that I couldn’t quite identify until the local CUGC team changed locations.
Where did we move to? A local microbrewery. (You can tell it is in Minneapolis/St. Paul because there is a canoe on the ceiling.)
The change in venue also changed the entire dynamic of the meeting.
In a conference room, many people sat staring into their laptops. During the presentations, there was little interaction because many of us were staring at our laptops. After the meeting ended, people quickly filed out and went home.
At the microbrewery, people sat at the bar or small tables with a refreshing beverage. People asked more questions during presentations. And once the meeting ended… People stuck around for at least another hour to relax and chat over more beer and food.
The layout of the conference room with rows of desks created barriers. The barriers prevented us from having small group discussions.
These barriers do not exist at the microbrewery. Plus, it is nice to leave the office space every once in a while.
Thanks for reading
