[Durham] website refresh / wordpress-themed club night

[mark]

On 05/01/16 10:55, Oliver Burnett-Hall wrote:
> However, I've got an alternative proposal: dump the website and use Meetup instead. Using a proprietary service like Meetup isn't ideal for a group focused on free/open source software, but I think it has some advantages. First off, a lot of people are using Meetup and that would make it easier to attract new members. Secondly, it's incredibly easy to use, both as an organiser and as an attendee. People can use existing Facebook or Google accounts to register with Meetup, or easily create an account not linked to anything if they're not keen on social media. A disadvantage is that you have to pay to organise a group, but I've already got a paid account so could set up one for the LUG at no extra cost.

Thanks Olly,

It certainly seems like a lot of other groups are using Meetup these
days, so it's worth considering.

These are some of my thoughts about it:

- do we have to either have our own site or a Meetup group? They have
quite different functions so maybe one shouldn't exclude the other.

- if we were to keep something under our own control at nelug.org.uk, we
could change it to a simpler, static site or we could at least have a
locked front page (rather than a weblog) that doesn't look out-of-date
so easily, which would be very easy to do.

- if we want to use a group event management/publicity service, there
are alternatives to Meetup. For example, I've recently been helping some
groups to develop a Radar presence , e.g.[1]

- I don't use Meetup, not solely because it uses proprietary code, but
because I don't want my behavioural data to be commodified. If you set
up a Meetup group but some of us don't participate in it, would that be
OK or would that cause problems? e.g. you wouldn't really know how many
attendees to expect at events because you wouldn't know how many
curmudgeons like myself would be coming ;)

Cheers,
Mark

[1] https://radar.squat.net/en/transition-durham

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