[Hudlug] Possible Revival of HudLUG Meetings

[Paul Brook]

> Talks/demos would be good - as long as we could ensure a continued supply
> of people willing to give them ;-)  It requires a bit of forward planning
> - but is do-able, I think (eg. maybe by cooperating with other groups &
> organisations that are within an evening's travelling distance).
>
> As for venues, I'm still feeling my way around Huddersfield - so am open to
> suggestions (I've worked in the area for 14 years - but until this year I
> was a cross-pennine commuter).  Ideally we'd want to have a free evening
> venue - as we wouldn't want to have to impose room hire fees on a group
> that might be very small to start with.  And yes, wifi & quietness are a
> couple of essentials. I'll put out a few feelers...

I'd say that wifi is nice, but not essential.  There are usually enough people 
have smartphones/3G dongles that if you desperately need something off the 
internet you can probably get it. In practice even good public wifi is 
unlikely to be sufficient to download large distro images, etc.

I agree that talks are the key.  I really doesn't matter that much how formal 
these are, or even that they be directly linux related.  Even if the link to 
linux is tenuous, you'll find that folks are much more likley to addend (and 
come back subsequent months) if there's a pre-organised talk/demo.  In my 
experience this is by far the hardest part of organising these events.  The 
first couple of months are easy, but after that it requires sustained effort 
to find/coerce new victims^Wspeakers.  While it may be true that everyone has 
something interesting to talk about, most will only do so if prodded with a 
sharp stick.

In short, build it an they will come.  In the unlikely event that they don't 
come, you know you did it wrong :-)

Paul