[HLUG] Suggestions for LUG Meeting Place for Workshops etc ?

[Julian Robbins]

Hello

Its nice to see so many members coming along to our monthly meetings.
Although the Courtyard is a good option in many respects, ie central, close
to town/city centre, accessible, food/drink available, free etc its one big
drawback is that there isn't anywhere to plug in and have a quieter space
to put of a demo or presentation.


Sarah has come up with a number of possible venues, of which there are many
and various, but on the most part there is a charge of approx £8 per hour
for the room for the group.

We previously went down this route of hiring a hall, but due to various
reasons it didn't quite work out.

So a couple of questions :-

*1) Ideas for a suitable venue*

Criteria:

   - Needs to be ideally in a town or Hereford City Centre, we';re not
   averse to meeting outside of Hereford if a good place comes up
   - Food and drink at the venue or very close is always popular
   - Car parking close by and ideally close to bus/train station
   - Would need to be a separate meeting space, where we can setup
   projector, have mains power ideally
   - Accessibility ideally
   - Free ?


*2) Would you mind paying to attend some meetings ?*

Most good meeting venues are charged, and if we get enough people along the
costs to each person coming along isnt great. However, if numbers go down
you get a problem, where the less come along, the more that people who do
come along end up paying each ...
But we should be at least keen to consider this option, if no good 'free'
venues come up

We have met previously in pubs, community rooms with IT support, Hereford
6th form college, and even an airfield cafe once (!), so there are lots of
places out there to think about.

I must stress that we won't be leaving the Courtyard; for a social 'chatty'
meeting area its absolutely fine, but the plan is to have more meetings
where we can put on demos/workshops to the group, presentations etc even to
other groups in the County about FOSS. Ideas have included Owncloud,
Virtual Machines, DTP Open Source software, Open street map etc, etc

So please come forth with any ideas here, on the two questions above - if
you have a venue you are linked with (ie work, etc) that we can attend for
free (or paid), all the better.

Julian