[cumbria_lug] Cumbria LUG meetings - Are there any?

[Simon Hobson]

Damian Hellstrom wrote:
>I used to host a LUG meeting twice a month - the most who turned up 
>were 4, the least was me, sitting there on my own for 3 and a half 
>hours..... some interest, eh?

I've had worse - in a different field of interest.

Don't forget that Cumbria is relatively sparsely populated, the 
subset using/interested in Linux is probably not that large, and the 
subset of those interested in such a meeting smaller still. So your 
target is probably very small.

And then there's geography. Carlisle is quite a drag for anyone 
further south than Penrith, or further west than Cockermouth. So that 
cuts down your potential audience even more. In the past when I had 
access to local membership lists of a Society I was an officer in, I 
observed that we had clumps around Carlisle, Workington/Whitehaven, 
Barrow in Furness/Ulverston, and Kendal. They accounted for about 
half our members between them - with the rest just dotted around all 
over. All those 4 areas are far enough apart for people not to travel 
between them without a very good reason.
We had exactly the same issue - around 200 members in the whole of 
Cumbria and North Lancs, few of whom ever appeared at a meeting. It's 
just the way it is.

For me, it's as easy to get to Manchester as Carlisle or Workington. 
Down there (with it's ease of transport, greater catchment 
population, etc) we tend to get up to about a dozen at meetings. I'd 
say having got 3 or 4 in Carlisle was not bad going !

-- 
Simon Hobson

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