[Lancaster] meeting last night

[andy baxter]

Hi all,

Just posting to say what happened last night. Seven people turned up, 
including three who were new to the group. I talked briefly about my 
idea of having a venue where we could meet regularly in a more focussed 
way, either doing technical talks, demos, or helping each other with 
projects we were working on. An interesting but not entirely conclusive 
discussion then followed. Sorry that I wasn't in a better mood to keep 
things a bit more on track.

A few things did come out of the discussion. I'll summarise what I can 
remember, and maybe other people can add the bits I've missed.

- Most people seemed to feel that there wasn't the energy or the numbers 
in the group at the moment to keep a fortnightly meeting going, and that 
if we're going to have other meetings than the monthly pub meets, it 
would be more realistic to think of doing these once a month or once 
every two months.

- I'm thinking this probably means that at the moment at least, it's not 
worth paying for a broadband account at the basement, or making a formal 
proposal to them about using the space on a regular basis, though we 
could maybe consider it as a venue for occasional meetings. The main 
thing I wanted from the meeting was some kind of decision on whether 
it's worth the effort and expense of doing this, so I'm glad to have a 
decision on this at least, even though it's not what I was hoping for.

- We talked a fair bit about what the group could be doing besides the 
pub meets. It was suggested that we need to be fairly clear about what 
we're trying to achieve here - e.g. outreach to people who don't know 
about linux is a different thing to having technical talks for people 
who are already interested. There seemed to be more interest in the 
second of these than the first.

- A few people suggested talks that they might be able to give - 
summarising pros and cons of different distros, digital photography, 
advanced networking stuff like how the email system works, more on linux 
audio, and how to install debian on a reflashable embedded network 
storage device.

- Mark Keating suggested that another possible venue would be a room at 
the offices his company have on White Cross. (Thanks for this). My 
feeling is that this would probably be better for the moment at least - 
one of the reasons I was thinking of the Basement is that it is near the 
centre of town, so easier to find for people who might want to drop in 
occasionally to a regular meeting. Also that we could set up the 
computers there how we want, but this isn't so important for doing 
occasional talks as for a more regular venue. Neither of these reasons 
apply so much for occasional, more technically focussed meetings, which 
seemed to be the general consensus on what we should be aiming at.

- Another thing that was discussed was the idea that if we're doing 
outreach type activities, we should make these about open source in 
general rather than linux in particular, as this is an easier way into 
open source stuff for most people, who may be reluctant to change their 
OS and lose all the skills they have learned with it. As far as I 
remember there was general agreement that this was the right way to go.

That's about all I can remember at the moment. The main positive thing 
that came from the meeting was that there was a pretty definite interest 
in having monthly or bi-monthly technical talks / demos, so maybe we 
could talk on the list or at the next meeting about how to get these going?

Thanks to everyone who came, and see you in a couple of weeks.

andy