We have a general STIC meeting on tap now, and Bob Nemec is introducing himself to interested Smalltalkers. As Bob says, STIC needs input and help from interested Smalltalkers, not just from the vendors.

First up, the explanation for why we're at LW/NW - we want to get a presence beyond the existing community - get people who don't know us yet to see what we're about. We'll be back at this venue for 2007 for sure, and we'll see how things go from there.

So what do we intend to do? First off, revamp the STIC websites (stic.org and whysmalltalk.com). The idea is to give something of a better cross vendor view of what's going on in Smalltalk. Bob pointed out that - "back in the day" - comp.lang.smalltalk was the main forum. USENET has feaded, and there are now tons of disconnected forums - mailing lists, wikis, blog sites, etc.

On to Monty Williams of Gemstone, who handles our finances. Most of our revenues have been from hosting StS, and then waiting to see if enough people sign up. What we want to see now is people getting the individual memberships (which gets you access to the 25% discount code for this show). One of the big helps of being at LW/NW brought up from the audience is this: it's easier to get corporate to pay for attendance of StS at LW/NW.

Back to Bob Nemec - he'd like to see STIC help hook up user groups and interested speakers - from vendors and elsewhere. Good question from the audience - for the interested Rubyist (etc - this is an example) - what does Smalltalk have that a Rails developer would be interested in looking at? That's one thing that the STIC website should have information on. Here's where I interjected something simple - we cannot do this without people in the community stepping up to the plate.

Another question - why LW/NW? Why were they interested? We got in to a large extent via the sheer persistence of Suzanne Fortman, and her efforts to work with the LW/NW people. They were willing to work with us, but this year was year one - we'll have more going on next year after having worked with them now. We'll be back here in Toronto next year, and after that? We'll have more ability to get things lined up with a full year's run-up time. To get a keynote, we needed to get someone speaking at a non-technical, C level whose schedule lined up.

Another question: "What does my $40 membership buy me?" In past years, it bought you a $75 discount for StS. This year (and rolling forward), it will buy you a $300 discount on StS. We intend to do more (revamping the websites, etc) - but the discount is a good buy all by itself. Or as Bob Nemec puts it, you're buying marketing dollars for STIC.

Good suggestion from Bruce Badger - there are Linux groups (schools, universities, etc) that always need speakers. One easy thing to do is to volunteer to speak. Many publications are just as hungry for content - what you need is a good angle (a company that solved a problem, etc) - not a technically oriented "why Smalltalk is great" piece.