DFIA Meet Up Tomorrow (Thursday)
The Democracy for Iowa Meet Ups meet tomorrow night at 7pm. Contact Karene 'kid' Nagel, the DFIA Meet Up Coordinator, for more information, or go to Iowa Meet Up Central to check out the agenda.
And Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Blog For Iowa 
It would be really helpful to either have the DFIa meetup the same night as the DFA meetup, or to make clear that the Quad Cities area Meetup is on a different night than those in the rest of the state. The 1st Wednesday meeting time has been THE night for folks in my county for nearly a year, and I can't really afford two different meetings in one week. I think dividing nights between DFA and DFIa is a bad idea. I know that we are not officially affiliated with DFA, and there may be tensions there. However, I think having the 1st Weds. time serve for both meetings would be very helpful. Some of the agenda items will be similar, and there will be a bigger turnout if both “groups” meet together.
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Well, you make some good points. I don't think the idea is to have two Meet Ups. The idea was to have Thursday instead of Wednesday, like the QC group does, because so many people have encountered conflicts with church night on Wed. We were trying to be consistent and do what was right for Iowa. It doesn't have anything to do with any tensions with DFA. And, I've never considered the DFIA Meet Up to be NOT the DFA Meet Up. Same thing, only more Iowa specific.
Looks like right now, we have 7 Meet Up groups in Iowa. After the activities of the 8th get under way, perhaps we should send out a survey to our Meet Up hosts and see where they stand on the issue. If church night is not a big sticking point for, say, 6 out of the 7 groups, we can perhaps change it back to Wednesdays and the QC can do their own thing.
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Hi Sue,
In the Quad Cities we have been Meetingup on Thursdays for a few months now and will probably continue to do that. (That's why Molly and I were able to visit your Meetup, as well as attend our own.) It IS our DFA as well as DFIA as well as DFQC Meetup – all combined. We do not have a separate Wed Meetup for DFA. We have many Deaners who can't ever come Wednesday because it is “church night”.
Thinking this might be a problem in the rest of the state, we suggested perhaps the rest of the Iowa Meetups might want to do Thursdays instead of Wednesdays as well. Maybe Iowa would be a little different? But other groups might not have this problem, and might want to stick with Wednesdays. In fact, it is MUCH easier to stick to the same day as the rest of the country, because your people will get email from DFA telling them Meetup is Wednesday, and any brand new people who find you thru the Internet will also show up the wrong night. We are working with the Meetup organization to make it easier to have our Meetup on an odd night (ie, they will actually send our people the Thursday date, not the Wednesday one) and they say by mid-summer they will be able to help us. We have definitely had problems with people coming on Wednesday instead of Thursday, but overall we still like Thursday better.
It was never our intention to dictate to any Meetup when they should Meetup. But I think people should be aware it is POSSIBLE to choose a different night than the first Wed for your DFA Meetup. We plan to have meetings every 2 weeks, only one of which is on Thursday, because, obviously, there are people who can't Meetup Thursday. Just not as many as can't Meetup Wednesday, LOL.
For now I think we should just ask the different Iowa Meetups what nights they are Meetingup, and recognize that in posts on Blog for Iowa. For example, we'd have a post “Tonight is Meetup (unless you are in the Quad Cities, where people are odd and refuse to conform, and then it's on Thursday)” – or something like that. Grin. Maybe I could get DFA to do the same thing?
Anyone who is interested in the joys and problems of Meetingup on odd nights, please email me.
Alta Price
altaprice@mailblocks.com
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Another thing we can do to help the confusing situation, which I would have done this month if I had thought of it in time, is to post the dates, times, and locations of the local Meet Ups on the Blog for Iowa. I know DFA never did that, but being local, we have that option.
Also, since Meet Up has those odd rules that cause some meetings to appear to be canceled, we can make sure those meetings go on even if Meet Up cancels them. I know in Storm Lake, a lot of our regulars never even signed up with the Meet Up site, but they'd show up every month anyway.
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