[Gloucs] Meetings and organisation - volunteers needed

[Francis Barton]

Dear friends in the LUG

Well after quite a few years of varying degrees of involvement in the
Gloucestershire LUG, I have got to the point where I cannot pretend I have
any interest in continuing my involvement.

I haven't made a meeting in over a year, and have blatantly failed to take
any steps towards arranging one or getting others organised to meet. Sorry
about this - I kept thinking that keeping the LUG active would be one of
those things I would get around to pursuing, but I can see that isn't
going to happen, particularly as I am going to become a father in 6 weeks'
time.

I take the general quietness of the list here as a good sign that many
people are finding support through their distro websites and forums, or
that Linux installs are now becoming so user-friendly that problems rarely
occur. This is a great thing!

Loads of people are joining the group all the time, and I think there is a
huge amount of talent and raw material for a dynamic and influential local
LUG, if there was better communication and co-ordination.

So I am proposing to step down from the list moderator role (spam filter
cleaner!) and I would like to ask for some people to step forward to take
on semi-formal roles as meeting/talk organisers, list admin/moderators,
publicity/event organisers etc. Also the IRC channel has been dead for a
while - anyone want to take on the job of drumming up interest and keeping
that going?

Those of you who are vigorous and full of enthusiaism for Linux, please
step up! If you would like to take the opportunity to shape the future of
the LUG then this is your chance. It's _so_ not a situation where things
are set in stone and newcomers are not able to come through and make their
mark on the organisation.

Please post your replies to this thread with your suggestions for ways
forward and your offers to volunteer to co-ordinate certain things or take
on the roles I have suggested (or other tasks you have thought of).

When the group has agreed suitable people to be responsible for such
things, I can pass on to them the passwords for the lug.org.uk website
(FTP/SSH) and for the mailman list admin page. These can (should!)
probably be separate people or teams.

With many thanks to Paul B, Glyn, Mick, Mark, Gareth, Iain, Steve S, Dave
Addison, Jinxy and many others who have helped keep things ticking over
for the last few years.

Francis (not going anywhere quite yet...)


PS Just to clarify for those who like to worry about such things; I do
think Linux is fantastic, and have not gone off it; in fact it's just
become so easy to use that I don't even think twice about it. It's mainly
because of this that I have lost motivation for bothering with belonging
to the LUG. It's nothing personal. Also, I want the LUG to prosper but I
was not contributing to this happening. So "Good night and good luck" as
the film title goes :-)