I have some candidates for the site of this Saturday’s meet-up. They’re all reasonably close to the I-96/I-275 interchange in Novi, though one is on the east side of the interchange, and they’re all fairly inexpensive, judging from the menus. But there are some key differences. Take a look and let us know what you think.
Sophia’s
35259 W. 10 Mile Road, Farmington Hills MI
Italian and Greek food. Liquor. Private room would be available for us, even though we’d be below their usual minimum. Can order from regular menu.
China Café
24299 Novi Rd., Novi MI
Chinese and Korean food. Liquor.
Panera Bread
25875 Novi Road., Novi MI
Soups, salads, sandwiches. Least expensive of the three; might be a tight fit (and no reservations per se)
I’ll be honest: the choices are listed in the order of my preference. I think that Sophia’s is likely to be able to accommodate the size of our group best, no matter what it might be in the end. But if I hear strong objections otherwise, I’ll go to the next.
I’m planning to call the winner back late tonight or in the morning to confirm our plans, so please let me know if you need to add a person to your count.
Here's the list I have for now:
YES:
1. peregrine kate
2. ProvokingMeaning
3. gregsullmich
4. Eclectablog
5. jennifree2bme
6. Unit Zero
7. mideedah
8. surelyujest
9. 2thanks
10. The Dave
11. MichiganChet
12. PhishRapper
13. & 14. ICanDoThis & spouse
PROBABLY:
1. Neon Vincent & spouse
2. Brainwrap
MAYBE:
1. DoReMI
2. Desi
3. fisheye
REGRETS:
1. khloemi
2. Ooooh
Now, as for more details regarding another important matter, namely the informed use of group Kosmails, please follow me over the jump.
Much credit and many thanks must go to 2thanks, who has provided a very long and fairly complete list here and here of the fine points of using Kosmail for groups. Please check out these links for details. As you can tell from these comments—and from the discussions on the DKos help desk, if you’ve ever stopped in there—group Kosmail is not ideal. For now, however, it’s the best way we have to communicate with each other apart from posting diaries. (Which are also fine, of course.)
I plan to invite several more people to the event on Saturday, based on names that keep coming in, as well as to the group itself. Sometime later today or tomorrow, depending on the match between my schedule and the website’s availability, I’d like to change the role of everyone in the group from Contributor to Editor.
This is important: at that point, when people become Editors, every Kosmail that was sent to the group, INCLUDING your response to the invitation to join the group, will be readable by every other Editor. I am sorry if I did not make it clear enough in the preface to my invitation that this would be the case; I can see some room for interpretation now of the language that I used.
IF FOR SOME REASON YOU SENT INFORMATION TO THE GROUP VIA YOUR RESPONSE TO THE INVITATION THAT YOU DO NOT WANT THE FULL GROUP TO KNOW, THEN PLEASE CONTACT THE HELP DESK RIGHT AWAY, AND LET ME KNOW THAT YOU HAVE DONE SO. In fact, I cannot guarantee that the help staff will indeed delete your message, but it would be the only way to be able to do so—and then I’d need to know that we’re waiting on the help desk staff to do that before I change people’s status in the group.
Now, it is also possible for us to have a means of communicating outside the site, via a Google group or the like—but as 2thanks has noted here, that has its own drawbacks, especially in terms of preserving anonymity. All that is business for another day; first things first.
Tomorrow I’ll post more details about the event, including our numbers; I’m also hoping to generate a little list of tentative agenda items. I have a feeling (so far unsubstantiated) that the most important agenda items are to hang out, meet each other, and to have fun, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have other more goal-oriented options available to us.
I apologize for posting this and running, but I have a standing commitment on Wednesday evenings. I would have preferred to have posted this earlier, if the site had cooperated.