Well the book club isn't going off as planned, but I will keep trying. This idea is definitely hard to complete, because it is asking a lot out of the members. Even though reading books is part of our profession, it is hard to get developers to read. It is too much of a chore for most of us. How can we change that? What would make a group like this better? I hear a lot of people complaining about time. I have no time, blah blah blah. I don't know how many people I have seen from the lab portion of my company, reading on their lunch breaks and every other week they are reading something else. Are the books we read just to boring as Kirk Evans stated? Are we just too lazy as a community? I think it is a combination of both.
Maybe if it was a article club we might get more interaction. Should I start and article of the week? Not sure if that is the best idea, but I would really like to hear some more suggestions. I know it is hard with the current DotNetNuke discussion module to get a conversation going, but I am hoping the ASP.NET forums 2.0 get released soon with the DNN integration piece complete. I know that will help our club tremendously.
So back to the point. I need ideas of what you think this club needs and ideas on what you want to read for the month of May. For the authors of the April books, I am sorry we didn't get much feedback. This was the first try and I hope as time progresses, more and more users will start reading. Out of a 150 members, 1 member responded to the discussion. Maybe we should take it down to one book and no levels. I don't want to leave anyone out if the book is too complicated, but we need to get this going. I am also striving to create a model for User Groups. I think this is our core audience to get this going. If you have a 15 minute discussion, before or after the general meeting for those who participated in the monthly book, it might bring the group closer together. Does that sound like something you group would be interested in? I am going to propose the idea to my group on Tuesday and I will post the interest and then it will help me define the model better for other groups. I leave you with a new acronym that Kent Tegels wants on a shirt “RTFB”. I hope you take what this stands for to heart and join the club.