SoftwareGR

There are certainly advantages to having a group that covers computer programming in general. There are several gaps in the West Michigan user group ecosystem (Web, Mobile, and niche languages come to mind) that it could fill. However, I think it's good for the group to have some sort of focus, and to define a technology or group of technologies to form the group around for several reasons:

1. A more specific subject helps to bring a core group of dedicated people in for each meeting. Members will come and go as their time demands and as their interest in the subject is piqued, but you need those dedicated repeat participants to drive the group. If the subject changes dramatically each meeting, you have less chance of developing that core.

2. It lets people know what they can expect from the meeting. You might assume that you can just announce a meeting's subject and people will decide based on that, but it's been my experience that a lot of people just don't pay attention that closely. You don't want to waste people's time.

3. It's easier to advertise what the group does. You need this for bringing in more members and sponsors. It's difficult to describe BarCampGR because it covers so many topics. When people ask, "What's this group do?" you need to be able to state the scope and purpose in a sentence or two.

4. As a group grows larger, it becomes harder to get participation from those members who don't feel comfortable in a crowd (a common malady among tech-types). There are a lot of shy geeks out there that have a lot of knowledge. They don't share it because they're anxious about standing in front of 100 people for a variety of reasons.

5. Tribalism is still a part of the human race. To feel a part of the group, people want to identify themselves as a member. "I'm a member of the Web Development group" tells other geeks and even non-geeks more about me than "I'm a member of the Development group."

6. As you encompass more subjects, your coverage of those topics tends to become more of a high-level view and less of a nitty-gritty how-to. A presenter has no idea how experienced his audience is in the subject realm, so he dumbs-down his presentation for the benefit of the less-experienced. I don't know about you, but I am rarely interested in the overview of a subject - I can get that easily from Wikipedia. I go to user group meetings to find out how things are done at the code level.

An option is to have various divisions within a more general group, with each division focusing on a topic: a web development division, a mobile dev division, and so on. However, I think this would lead to a lot of in-fighting between divisions wrt to resources and group decisions and would have little benefit overall. Autonomous groups make more sense to me.

In my opinion, it makes the most sense to form a group around a naturally-defined set of technologies. I would prefer to see and would attend meetings for an active web development group and a separate mobile development group.

What I would also like to see is more large gatherings of the disparate groups, such as BarCampGR, but that is a topic for another day.

Yes, first time posters have to be approved, so we don't get spam on the list. Kyle Adams and I admin the group, and I'd be happy to add anyone else too.

The fact is that meetings don't happen unless someone takes the reigns to set a date and location. Even though I can't make it on the 7th, I applaud your efforts to organize a meeting and look forward to what comes out of it.