[Lancaster] Last night's meeting . . .

[jonath]

Me, Andy and Dave turned up. Mark popped in briefly. So at least I can
put three names to faces, as it were.

Anyway . . . it seemed like much was discussed last night but the main thing:

Andy was talking about setting up some kind of Wordpress training
sessions, just covering the basics of setting up a web-site, perhaps
aimed at the novice users. I then mentioned my idea of setting up some
kind of computing help and support session, and perhaps how Andy's
Wordpress training idea could emerge from that. Andy could probably
elaborate further as to his plan, but I'll go into detail about this
'help and support session' idea that I've come up with.

For a start, it probably needs a snappier title but the idea is this:
we hire out a room somewhere (The Gregson?!) for an evening where we
have some kind of open session, whereby people can wander in with
their computing problems and we try to help them out. We'll have a few
PCs / lap-tops set up and working with some flavour of Linux; I reckon
Ubuntu, as that seems to be the easiest to get set up and working.
Perhaps also we have a few very basic PCs available for sale . . . I'm
thinking the kind of PC that people usually take to the tip, but which
would work perfectly well with Linux installed . . . although perhaps
if we've obtained these PCs for free, we can give them away for free
too (?!). See, I reckon there must be hundreds of people in Lancaster
for whom: can't afford a PC, have some kind of hideous virus/malware
infested Windows-based PC, have a PC but want to do more with it, etc.
I guess being a Linux User Group, we would be highlighting the
benefits of using Linux, but I wouldn't want this to be the focus and
if people had problems / queries about their Windows-based PC, we
would try to help out.

When I explained the above to Dave and Andy, Andy mentioned that
similar things have been set up in other cities (I think Manchester
was mentioned), so it might be good to arrange a trip out.

Anyway, I just wanted to see what everyone else thought of this idea.
Bad idea? Good idea? Is it possible? Worthwhile?

jonathan