Agendas

Times are minutes from the start. Move them freely; keep the welcome, the newcomers' introductions and the next date wherever they fall.

The standard evening (two hours)

When	What	Notes
0	Arrivals. Food and drink if there is any; the sign-in sheet.	The host for newcomers is at the door.
15	Welcome. The welcome slides: who we are, the code of conduct in two sentences, the plan for the evening, the Wi-Fi.	Five minutes, no more.
20	Round of names. Everyone says their name and, in one sentence, what they do with Lisp (or would like to).	With more than twenty people, ask only the newcomers.
30	The talk. 20 to 40 minutes, then questions.	Keep time; leave room for questions.
75	Lightning talks. Up to four, five minutes each, from the sign-up sheet.	Any subject touching Lisp; a demo is fine.
95	Hacking and talk. Help each other, pair on a library, try the exercises (`exercises.lisp`), or just talk.	The newcomers' host helps anyone get set up.
115	Close. Thank the speakers and the room's host; announce the next date and the next talk if it is known.	Say where the recap will be posted.

A hack night (two to three hours)

When	What
0	Arrivals; set up.
15	Round of names: everyone says what they want to work on tonight, and what help they could give or would like. Write the projects on a board.
30	Hacking. Pairs and small groups form around the projects.
90	Short break.
150	Show and tell: two minutes each for anyone who has something to show, finished or not.
170	Close; the next date.

Good projects for a hack night: an issue on a library many people use (look for "good first issue" labels), the documentation of a library, porting something to a second implementation, the exercises in this kit, or the projects on common-lisp.net.

A reading group (90 minutes)

The group reads a chapter (or a paper, or a library's source) between meetings and discusses it at the meeting.

When	What
0	Welcome; the round of names.
10	A summary of the reading by one member, five minutes.
15	Discussion: what was new, what was unclear, what was wrong.
50	Live code: try something from the reading in a shared REPL.
80	Choose the next reading. Close.

Readings that have worked well for groups:

Practical Common Lisp, Peter Seibel (free online)
Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation, David S. Touretzky (free online)
On Lisp, Paul Graham (free online)
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, Peter Norvig (free online)
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol, Kiczales, des Rivières and Bobrow
Common Lisp Recipes, Edi Weitz
The source of a library everyone uses: Alexandria, cl-ppcre, ASDF.

Online (75 minutes)

Shorter: attention lasts less long in front of a screen.

When	What
0	The room opens; the host is in it, camera on.
5	Welcome, the code of conduct, how the meeting works: microphones off unless speaking, questions in the chat or with a raised hand.
10	Round of names, newcomers first, in the chat for a big group.
15	The talk, 20 to 30 minutes; the host reads out questions from the chat.
50	Lightning talks or open discussion.
70	Close: the next date, where the recording will be (if there is one).

The welcome, word for word

If you are not sure what to say at the start, say this:

Welcome to the [name of the group]. I'm [name], and I organize these meetings. We meet [every second Tuesday] to talk about Common Lisp and what we do with it; you are welcome whatever you know, from nothing at all to the inside of the compiler.

We have a code of conduct: be kind, be patient with questions, and keep jokes from being at anyone's expense. If anything makes you uncomfortable tonight, tell me or [second contact], and we will deal with it.

Tonight: [speaker] on [talk], then lightning talks (the sign-up sheet is [there]), then time to hack. If this is your first time, [host for newcomers] will help you get a Lisp running on your laptop.