Our initial meeting today resulted in tentative agreement for a social event quite similar to last year's: off-site following the booth-crawl, members and affiliates. Last year's was totally 90 Minds-sponsored; this year we'll aim to partially subsidize it from affiliate sponsorship.
The main purpose of this event is to encourage growth of our personal connections beyond the normal Socialcast variety. It is this understanding and trust between members which lets the group get beyond just ad hoc, mutual tech support.
We weren't able to get much into the training question except agreement that it should be for members (not customers of any type). We'll drill into that this next week, same time-same station.