Loud, Drunk Fiasco at JHB Meet-up?

Without a breathalyser one can't assert that there was any drunkenness at the Johannesburg meet-up last night, but in my personal view, the behaviour exhibited was certainly consistent with that and was very disturbing.

While Cape Town meet-ups are going from strength to strength, looking professional, highlighting their speakers and presenting the kind of image that would encourage anyone, even those up here that just see the photos of speakers on podiums delivering great slide shows to want to participate, last night's Johannesburg meet-up felt like an over-served pub towards the end.

It started great. People kept quiet during others' talks and turns to speak, added valuable insight and the home made baked goods available was scrumptious. Kagiso's first talk would encourage any new person to join from anywhere in our country and encouraged those of us already farther along the path of learning and using Drupal to keep sharing with others and learning ourselves. For someone to walk out on someone else' talk to go get more beer was disrespectful and the harbinger of things to come for the evening.

By the time Andre's MVC talk got to about two-thirds of the way through, which we all expected would be a bit tougher and more technical he was firs presented with just a pause-question to ask more information. That's all valid and then the questions branched to some interesting ones that brought the high-level talk into relevance with Drupal 8 and some that were absolutely terrible in that they ended up with Andre being loudly encouraged to complete his talk (the slides have a completion progress bar on top, so we all knew we were close to wrapping up already).

One should be as respectful of a speaker speaking about something you already know as of one speaking about something you do not seem to grasp yet. In both instances others around the table may be interested to learn more. In this case I'd have loved to hear more from the AngularJS guys that were there to bring the MVC talk into relevance with their work and I'd also have loved to hear more about the relevance to Drupal 8 and other implementations that we may touch on in our brave new off-the-island Drupal world.

To the many new people that were attending for the first time: Please don't see last night's Johannesburg Drupal user group meet-up as typical. We do have a beer or two once in a while and it's even been put forward that that's helped the shy and quiet among us participate a bit easier, but we do not usually blindly talk over speakers, become rowdy to the point of not being able to show our hunger for learning and sharing and inhibiting our ability to constructively work together.

Please come again.

By the time the show-and-tell rounds started things were pretty chaotic. Around the middle of that the greatest display of the aforementioned drunk-appearing (because I can't simply call it that) behaviour presented itself with a near-falling over bouncing shout match between two people that can only be matched by the most inebriated students on a drinking spree.

Please, let's not do this again. Apologies will likely not be forthcoming and beer isn't the culprit, but somehow we must find a way to avoid this sort of thing happening again or being associated with a community effort for Drupal.

People come to learn and to share. Let's respect and support that.