Overlapping social events in the tech scene is beginning to become an issue for Nashville’s geek community and I suppose I should be glad that there are an over abundance of things to do rather than complain that I now have choices.
But when one of those meetups remains ignorant enough to overlap events on purpose, well, I guess that speaks to the heart of what kind of meetup group it actually is. I’m talking about the faux community “Digital Nashville” (Here start-eth the Flame War).
Digital Nashville has taken it upon themselves to schedule their event at the exact same time as the Centre{source} Mixer, which has always been well communicated and began their regular monthly meetups in January. Therefore I can say with a bit of authority that the information about the c{s} Mixer gathering, which typically has a pretty good turn out, is not hard to find. I can also say that there is some spill over so that the same people attending the Mixer are also involved in the Digital Nashville meetup.
But they chose to remain ignorant and schedule their event on the same day despite having at least a month to preplan. I know this because I got a message from the “Digital-Nash Ville” Facebook account. Apparently they are also ignorant of starting a Facebook group managed by real people (that is, actual people without hyphens in their names). Do you really want to attend a DIGITAL event that’s been organized by folks who don’t know how to use Facebook properly?
I’m just saying, If I were to recommend a choice between the two, I’d go with the Mixer.
[/END_Flame War]
Tom Cheredar 
I was disappointed by the scheduling, too. And everything seems to happen on Thursdays, which makes some sense (Thursday is the working person’s Friday?) but the scheduling is starting to get pretty thick.
As you know, I chose the c{s} mixer, partly because it’s conveniently around the corner from my home. I would have liked to have gone to the Digital Nashville event.
Tom,
Very insightful piece here and as being the organizer of the Digital Nashville’s education series I really appreciate all feedback, especially given that we are such a new organization and even more new to providing, what we feel, are quality education sessions. I say that last part with confidence as the majority of attendees have said so.
Once more, we really appreciate your, the community’s, feedback on all we do. In fact, so much so that we are soon to announce a town hall style meeting in June for gathering and opening a more proactive dialog between the leadership team, all being volunteers from the community, and the community itself.
Yes, we are aiming to not have an overlap of events for this session, as we do all our session, and hope you come and bring all your great feedback with you.
Lastly, let me address your claim that the scheduling conflict was intentional on our part. As being the organizer of these events I can insure you that this is not true. We started planning these events in November and chose the last two Thursdays in the month as the target dates for our events. In fact, our next event will be presented by Nick Holland from CentreSource as our relationship is very strong.
I hope I have helped clear up the two concerns in your posting and you are able to make it out to our town hall meeting in June. Any other feedback, feel free to provide to me directly at education-at-digitalnashville.net or jacques-at-kitewebconsulting.com
– Jacques
[…] The organizer of Digital Nashville’s “Education Sessions responded to my last entry that basically pointed out they had scheduled their event the same day as the centre{source} […]
or, you could, y’know… go to both. I’m just sayin.