[SLUG] What's everyone upto?

[Chris Sutcliffe]

On Sun, 2004-06-20 at 22:27, Jamie Adams wrote:
> It's all quiet on the Scarborough Linux User Group mailing list. Eerily 
> so.
> 
> So what's up everyone? How did the last meeting go? Any progress on the 
> Freedom Day? What bit of software has caught your eye recently?
> [snip]

At the meeting we looked at what each of us really wants from the group.
People seemed to come up with very similar answers and the two main
themes were:

1. To meet and speak with like-minded people.
2. To learn more about Linux.

At the moment we are just a group of friends meeting for a few drinks
and if Linux gets discussed then fine and if not, well that's fine too.
It was decided, that while being fun, this was not a constructive way to
acheive both our aims, in particular [2]. The general consensus was that
to acheive our aims for the group we needed to attract more members.

In order to attract more members we need to give prospects a reason to
attend a meeting and so we discussed giving tutorials (again). We came
to the conclusion that it would be an idea to drop the more complex
subjects for now and to give presentations that would appeal to a wider
audience.  

Candidates for tutorials were the various OpenOffice.org (OOo)
applications and editing digital images with the gimp. I volunteered to
look at giving a talk on Impress, OOo's answer to MS Powerpoint but
first up will be Mike with a talk on Writer and then, I think, Al with a
presentation on the Gimp. These events will be advertised in the local
paper and, hopefully, will bring in new members.

A number of, if not all, members voiced their dissatisfaction with the
current venue for meetings. The Toby Jug in the Cask is smelly, has poor
lighting and is no good for more than a couple of machines and it also
seems to be condusive in splitting the group into a few small groups. We
also decided that a pub excluded potential members under the age of 18
and others who didn't like the atmosphere of a pub. It was also
suggested that the meetings could start a little earlier - 1830 hours?
Any suggestions for a new venue would be gratefully accepted.

Another idea, from Mike, was to give the dates for meetings for a number
of months at a time to give people a chance to plan ahead. I am
currently working on this. I will not book more than one meeting ahead -
see above paragraph for reasons why - I will, however, give a 6 month
list of intended meeting dates that would need to be confirmed.

We did get round to discussing Software Freedom Day (SFD) but most of
the evening was given to discussing the above. Mike mentioned the stall,
I volunteered to do a stint of a couple of hours if I'm not on shift
and, I think, Ian volunteered aswell. Anyone else prepared to give up a
little of their time? We do need some solid details though such as
place, date, times. Mike?

I think that was about all, if I have missed anything out or got
anything wrong I apologise and ask others that were at the meeting to
correct my errors.


cheers


Chris
-- 
Chris Sutcliffe
Linux User #160319
<chris at snbcomputers.com>
Scarborough LUG <http://www.scarborough.lug.org.uk/>