[cumbria_lug] Meetings...

[Schwuk]

Michael Saunders wrote:

>On a more serious note, is there any chance that a future meeting
>could be held a bit further south in Cumbria? Aspatria is just way too
>far for me (and others in Furness) to travel, and having something a
>bit closer to Furness would help matters greatly.
>
Happily. Remember - the meetings in Gleaston were too far for (most of) 
us North & West Cumbrians. I knew when organising the meetings in 
Aspatria that the 'southerners' probably wouldn't be able to come, but 
it was more likely that the 'westerners' would. This has been largely 
true, but we still have far more subscribers to this list than meeting 
attendees.

The facility at Aspatria is very good (as was Gleaston) for practical 
sessions, but it suffers - albeit less so - from the same problem as 
Gleaston: location. The informal session I organised in a bar in 
Whitehaven was quite well attended, but the practical sessions have 
generally been more fun (particularly the LTSP one).

Maybe we should break the meetings into informal and practical, and have 
one of each each month (I currently aim for a meeting every 3-4 weeks). 
The practical sessions could continue to be hosted at Aspatria (unless 
another suitable, more central location can be found), and an informal 
session could be arranged in a more central location - preferably with 
beer and food (in order of priority).

An alternative would be to have separate North/West and South meetings, 
although I feel this would be short lived due to sparsity and diverse 
locations of our members.

BTW, the LUG currently has no formal structure - I organise things 
because no one else is. If anyone else wants to organise a meeting 
(informal or otherwise), please do so. Personally. I will endevour to 
attend any that are organised.

Questions to all:
1) Does anyone know of suitable locations for both practical and 
informal sessions?
2) Are there any tools we can use/develop to help us? I'm thinking along 
the lines of  web-based meeting managment ala Meetup ( 
http://www.meetup.com/ )

Cheers,
--
Schwuk