Tuesday Open Mike 1: summary of the first meeting

Meeting was attended by 6 people. Logistics and possible topics were discussed. Broadly, this was what was decided:

• We will create a blog to document the links and learnings of the various topic during this exercise. This blog will be new and separate from Austin's version of Open Mike (http://thursdayopenmike.blogspot.com).
• We will join the same yahoogroups list as Austin's Open Mike group (thursdayopenmike@yahoogroups.com) [assuming Austin is okay with that].
• We will continue to meet at Red Rock Cafe on Castro&Villa in Mountain View, every Tuesday evening at 7PM.
• Some sample topics were suggested and Subbu to send out an email on the first of them later this week. The plan is for everyone to read and send out links ahead of time, so that we can discuss in a more informed and focused manner at the meeting. (More on topics later in this post.)
• We would like to narrow down the specific question we are trying to answer or get an opinion on before the meeting itself, so that one (albeit small) issue is completely discussed and threshed out, while allowing for discussion to organically move on to other topics. This is to ensure that there is some focussed learning instead of random desultory conversations.
• We would also like to have a way to review and see if our opinions and thoughts have changed, increased etc. from what they were about any topic prior to the discussion -- this is aimed at a way to track and see if the Open Mike is really working for each of us.
• The Open Mike is definitely a non-Asha event, and is also definitely not restricted to any geographical region (like India) either in topic or in members.
• All present to spread the word and invite everyone we know who might be interested in such an activity.

Apart from the above, we discussed possible topics and this is broadly what different folks came up with:

• Gender bias/perspectives/stereotyping/spousal-abuse(either direction)/affirmative action along gender lines
• Conservation -- energy/resources/environment
• Secularism -- why hate? [addendum: Why religion?]
• Is organic farming a good (economically viable) option for India?
• Why nation boundaries? why demarcations?
• Animal rights? why hunting? vegetarianism?

More clarity on topics will be developed as life goes on. For the next meeting, Subbu will formulate a question based on what he has suggested and send it out with a few links. For now, I've listed that topic as "Gender: bias or reverse bias?"