[SLUG] Meeting notes

[Jamie Adams]

Heres the notes from the meeting on Tuesday. My notes didnt make all that much
sense a few days later, so correct me if any of it is incorrect.

Jamie

        adamsj at sdf-eu.org
  SDF-EU Public Access UNIX System
ICQ: 140365501 | Linux User: #314423
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Lug Meeting of 20th January 2004.

The adgenda for this meeting was to discuss how we could make improvements to 
the lug throughout 2004. We had loads of great suggestions and I think the 
general concensus was that it was a useful meeting. 

My note taking skills are not that great, and they make even less sense a few 
days later. Anyways, hopefully I got most of it down. These are not minutes as 
such, just a rough record of some of the discussion.

Im going to try and split it into a couple of categories.

Meetings:
It was agreed that we need some fresh blood in the group, however we need to 
appeal to a broader range of people before we can expect new people to attend 
meetings, and find them useful. We decided that we will have two types of 
meetings. We will have the meetings at the same regularity as we do now, but 
bi-monthly we will will hold a more structured meeting with talks / 
demonstrations. It was thought that this would be more effective at a new 
location, which has yet to be found. More dicussion on this will take place 
at the next meeting. If anyone has any ideas for the venue, please let us know.

There were some good simple ideas to raise awareness of the group, including:

* Signatures on email.
* Posters in computer shops, colleges, libraries and other appropriate places.
* Media events, such as 'Sponser-a-Penguin' and an Install day.
* Writing to local businesses.

Gavin made a good point when he said that we don't want to be deceiving 
people. We are afterall just a normal bunch of people, not a profesional 
organsation. However we do have a lot of knowledge between us and some 
sort of responsibilty to share our knowledge with the local community.

Fintan said that there should be someone with a supply of distro's in case any 
newbies turn up that need one. I will burn off some copies of the more popular 
ones bring them along to future meetings. Other people could do this too. Books 
were also mentioned but I can't remember what we decided on that one.

It was agreed that some more work needs to be done on the website. It was 
mentioned that the front page has not changed for some time, and that this along 
with low mailing list traffic was making the group look a litle 'dead'. It 
was thought that it would be best if a couple of people held the login 
details for the site, just in case any one person is uncontactable for an 
extended period of time. Gav has a couple of updates that he is going to upload, 
and people should think of any other things that they would be interested in 
seeing on the site. The now redundant survey (if they are actually still there 
anyway) pages are to be removed. A basic 'linux installation/setup' guide was 
suggested.

Aaaaand exhale. Thats about as much as I can decipher from my notes. if I missed 
anything important out, i'm sorry. And if any of it is wrong, please correct me.

I personally felt like we covered quite lot and I came away feeling quite 
positive about the group and 2004. I hope other people did too.

Comments welcome.