[Lincs] IRC Meetings & Digital Projector

[Dave Pearson]

* Marc Mc Guinness <marc at mcguinness.de> [2004-08-17 22:48:45 +0200]:

> i am very disappointed and discouraged by all the people who don't give us
> any feedback.

Don't be; this sort of thing is par for the course with almost any sort of
"club" or "society" -- especially in the early days. On top of this, and I
partially speak from experience here (as a committee member of a reasonably
new astronomical society), it's worth keeping in mind that not everyone who
might have an interest in such a group or such a subject will have the same
level of interest or evangelism as you might. And, of course, there's the
ever present time issue.

Take the IRC meetings as a good case in point: I don't know about anyone
else but, for me, something like the IRC thing holds no interest and, worse
still, it happens at a terribly inconvenient time. I doubt I'm alone in
having such a thing clash with stuff like getting home from work (not really
an issue for me given that I work from home but I'm sure it'll be an issue
for other people), spending time with offspring, getting offspring to bed,
preparing dinner, consuming dinner, attending to other household chores,
spending time with significant other, trying to keep away from a PC having
spent all day in front of a handful of them, etc... Spending time with a
(for me) terribly inefficient form of communication is way down on my
priority list.

But, given that, you shouldn't take it as a general value judgement on LLUG,
you need only realise that something like a LUG has to compete with lots of
other things to understand that the outcome of that "competition" isn't
something you should use as a source for disappointment or discouragement.

Getting any sort of group or society going can take many months and many
meetings before things start to fall into place and before a core of helpers
can really be built up. Anyone starting to get such a ball rolling needs to
be prepared for this fact.

> please help us at least by placing the posters in your cars!

I think this might also end up being another source of disappointment and
discouragement. It's worth keeping in mind that, for most people, attending
a "computer club" was something you did in the 1980s and, since then, it's
something that's done at about the same level as train spotting, plane
spotting and other hobbies that tend to have bad PR. I'd be astonished if
posters in cars and other "normal" places made any significant different to
attendance. You need to be prepared for it not making a difference and to
not be disappointed or discouraged by this.

I was around for the creation of the Hampshire LUG back in the late 1990s
and it was small to start and grew reasonably well. To the best of my
knowledge there was no general advertising campaign to speak of, the LUG
made use of the best channels possible: the places where people who might be
interested hung out. This included GNU/Linux user groups, mailing lists,
computer magazines, that sort of thing.

Posting information to the right locations and word-of-mouth to other people
who might be interested will probably result in a better response than just
general advertising. Anything else is a bonus.

Enough feedback? ;>

-- 
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