[Glastonbury] next meeting

[tony at whittycat.me.uk]

Martin Wheeler writes: 

> Also, the reason next week's meeting was changed 

Mm. I had just got adjusted to the 7th but now I'm confused again. I shall
turn up on whatever date the consensus agrees on. 

> I throw this open for comment and discussion.

I haven't been to any meeting yet so I am not qualified to talk on what the 
group should do but here goes anyway. I belonged to two groups in Reading.
Sclug has been meeting regularly since 1995 and they always meet in a pub,
if the beer is good and there is no music. They sit round a table and talk
in a highly technical manner so I was quickly out of my depth and went home.
If anyone asks what the purpose of the group is they say 'to drink beer';
I expect Linus would approve. The other group was not a linux group, they
met regularly in the British Legion where they paid for the committee room 
and members paid 2 pounds if they went, nothing otherwise. Usually someone 
would give a talk but there were no machines and no power strips. Meetings
usually had about 12 people. Since coming to Somerset (Wellington) I have
been to a few meetings of the Devon and Cornwall linux user group, either
in the Rugby Club in Paignton (which morphs into the Cricket Club in
the summer), where people bring power strips and laptops and hunch over 
their keyboards and talk in a highly technical manner, mostly about debian.
Someone installed Debian woody on my Dell laptop which didn't work at all
but I went home and installed sarge which was brilliant. Once a year James
Wonnacott hosts a meeting at his farmhouse near Launceston where people
bring power strips and laptops and food, or in Gemma's case a desktop, and 
hunch over their keyboards. James has broadband and a router so a lot of 
time is spent trying to the get the laptops to talk to each other. James
cooks the sausages and burgers on a barbecue and everyone stands around 
wearing debian T-shirts and talking bull until it is time to go home. 

So what I am saying is that there isn't just one style of meeting. The main
thing is to get like-minded people together. Then it could be highly 
technical or it could be an install-fest depending on what sort of people
they are. 

As for I, I know very little about sound and linux so I am hoping to learn
something sooner or later, no hurry. 

See you in December, 

Tony Sumner