[HLUG] Wednesday meeting

[Pete Linnell]

HLUG Open Source Day

Evaluation Meeting.

The final Wednesday of March saw us meet, once again at swish point4 
venue, mainly to evaluate our performance on Open Source Day the 
previous Saturday. Ten members attended the meeting, so as usual there 
was a background murmour of geek behaviour, configuring laptops mostly! 
as well as focussed and more ad hoc discussions. For these reasons, 
these notes are offered as indicative only, as I must have missed many 
nuances of the various conversations.

Good things;
Venue.
The high turn out of HLUG members, and their stamina to last the day.
Presence of members of neighbour LUGs, notably Will from Worcester who 
played an active role all day.
Attendance by both senior officers and elected members of HCC.
Some young people came.
Quality keynote address from Mark, and follow on discussion.
Graced by the Mayor.
Steady flow of visitors, about 50.
Range of resources on offer - distros, Open Disc, Mags.
Good overall event management.

Not good things,
Could have had more visitors, only 50 ish; of whom 26 left contact details.
No projector or sound system for presentations.
Media run in could have been better.
No recognition from DFD website

We are sadly stuck with the local media mix as it is, and it's parochial 
self serving policies are beyond our power to effect. However, the HOSS 
awards and the presence of the Mayor may help to bring about some 
aftermath coverage.( Not in HT it didn't :-( )

On the web however there has been a flurry of activity; within hours of 
the event there were blog postings from Bristol and from Open Sure. We 
now recognise that we need to make a more determined effort to utilise 
the social media channels in a more effective way to promote future 
events as well as the work of the group as a whole. As an urgent task, 
the group seeks a suitably experienced person to deliver a workshop on 
these matters for a forthcoming HLUG meeting! Who's up?

Tony reported the enthusiasm shown by the teenage visitors for the Linux 
platform games. There is agreement that we should do more to reach this 
user cohort.(After ISFD a number of Linux gamers came to the October 
meeting - but not been seen since - where are you guys?) Sarah reports 
that the teenagers she spoke to responded to the posting on the sixth 
form college bulletin board - and suggests we should drive hard in this 
direction. A proposal for some outreach work is to be followed up.

It is suggested that the exhibitiion should be on display in the 
libraries. Pete is willing to deliver and assemble it as long as it 
stays up for a month! and Steve volunteered to visit the library from 
time to time to restock with discs. Pete to contact library service and 
report back.

All-in another excellent performance from HLUG building on the 
achievements of ISFD and learning new things!




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Pete Linnell M.Sc. (Dist) Architecture:Advanced Environment and Energy Studies.