On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohandas@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the write-up. Why are these meetings happening in classrooms? The Mumbai one also happened in a lecture hall complete with green board and chalks! There was even a rickety unbalanced table up front that the speakers unconsciously wanted to lean against! I see that Pune has at least advanced to white boards and pens in the class room selected. :)
If someone from SICSR is on the list they may be able to put a much definitive answer.
My guess is that arranging for the auditorium or, even an informal gathering place at a reasonably quick notice is difficult to do. There aren't many places at Pune where you can get together, sit around and then break off into smaller circles of discussion. Especially at that hour of the day.
That said, the "classroom" did encourage the students (the newbie contributors) to speak up in familiar surroundings. So, it actually worked out fairly well although Erik and Danese ended up doing a bit of back and forth on moderating and queue-ing up the questions.