GAfE+Poland - GEG Poland Coffeehouse Meetup

Post date: 29-Oct-2014 09:22:03

We held our first GEG Poland online meetup yesterday evening in Hangouts <https://plus.google.com/events/cee1ltr4u5ajmlelq7nrh96di18?authkey=CNqjg6KM1OLY7wE> which was moderately successful. A total of 12 people from the group indicated that they were coming or maybe coming to the Event, but in the end only 4 of us showed up. What was disappointing was that only one person was not already familiar to me, and his English was limited which made communicating with him online a little difficult.

We did some basic introductions for where we are in Poland, what we do, and what Google tools we are interested in. We did a little brainstorming or "group think" to decide upon some ideas for getting together in the future.

Some take-aways from our discussion are as follows:

• • to create a Google Form for collecting demographic information from members of the Community which includes where they are located (perhaps build a map), whether they are using GAfE or a personal Google account, which Google tools they are proficient in using and which tools they would like to learn more about, and which languages they are comfortable in conversing in (English and/or Polish).

  • people are interested in having a face-to-face meetup - perhaps the first could be in Warsaw before Christmas in a coffeeshop somewhere in the city (I will look into getting some Google swag/gifts for those who attend)

  • we wonder about how many of the members of the Community are teachers and are dedicated/interested in working with Google tools for education, due to the low turn-out for the event and the low numbers of members who have engaged with introducing themselves to the Community by posting there; perhaps this speaks to an underlying need to have two separate Communities aimed at English speakers and Polish speakers, which I have been wondering about from the outset

  • because of the diversity of the membership and their distribution around Poland (and in other countries), online Hangouts for trainings and discussions seem to be the best venue

  • I discussed with Doug Julien and Simon May about their interest in being co-leaders for GEG Poland which they both agreed to, as three heads will be ultimately better than just one, and will help to bring some different ideas to the table for the Community (I will look into the process for adding co-leaders to the group)