[Lancaster] meeting last night

[Ken Hough]

Andy,

That pretty well sums up what I remember of the meeting. Well done and thanks 
for your efforts.

With the quite limited active support that the group has, for now at least 
it's really not feasible to plan on any definite long term programs.

Regards

Ken hough

On Wednesday 18 February 2009 12:39:49 andy baxter wrote:
> 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
>
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