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# If you hold a meeting, and no one shows up, did the meeting ever happen? : I can't remember if or how much I've written on this subject here, but over the past year or so I've been investing a certain amount of energy in trying to get some sort of social/intellectual interaction happening between the PhD students at GSLIS. On average, attendance at our gatherings is ok, about half of the group (8-9 of 18). At this afternoon's get-together, four people besides myself showed up, and two of those left (and I don't blame them) after seeing that this wasn't going to be much of a meeting. Two people had emailed me with regrets before hand, but a lot of folks just didn't show.

I suppose I should expect setbacks, but I couldn't (can't) help feeling disappointed about the turnout. While I don't spend that much time on this kind of thing, it is one more thing to think about, one more thing to do. My ROI on these meetings are low: I'm lucky if I break even, so to speak. But meetings like today leave me deeply in the red.

One of the other folks who did show up suggested that we take the meeting back to its original purpose: for PhD students to do breif presentations on thinkgs they are working on, and get feedback. To kickstart this process, at our next meeting (in a few worrks) we three will be giving 'lightening round' presentations on our work: 10 minute presentation with 5 minutes for questions. That and some coffee should hopefully make the meeting worthwhile.

At the end of the meeting, we'll choose three new people to present at the next meeting. If there is not enough interest, or if not enough people attend for us to find three people to present, I'll probably step away from the meetings and focus on other things.

(It may be, of course, that the other students have already reached the same decision I have and decided not to bother attending. If that's the case, I hope I find out soon so that I (and others) can stop wasting my (our) time.)