[Nottingham] Response on awareness day

[Michael Simms]

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 00:53 +0000, Simon wrote:
> I personally do not know any local companies that would be interested,
> so I didn't send any information.

There is a whole big internet here, or a yellow pages. Pick 5 that look
likely.

> Surely it would have made sense not to purchase any stamps until you
> had a list of names?

Maybe, but I assumed that the LUG would be able to produce.

> Last mail about this, you were asked to provide the information you
> gave to the newspapers. This indicated to myself and maybe other
> people that you already gave them information.

I said that I had only given information to the Post and that it was
verbal and not a specific advert. I had asked for a discussion on what
we were going to tell the other paper, as they wanted email sending to
them, and nobody responded.

> > Martin has asked for people to let him know if they can do the awareness
> > day on the Friday. How many people have come back to him and say they
> > can? ZERO.
> 
> I can not speak for everyone else but I didn't think I would be able
> to take time off work at such short notice. I did arrange time off as
> of today which I was going to mention on the list. But..

Well, thats good, thats an extra set of hands, and we appreciate it, so
you can count yourself excluded from that part of the rant.

> > Do people really not care? Do we want to stop bothering to do the talks,
> > and try and raise awareness on Linux? Do we just want to turn this into
> > a social club? If so, then thats fine, a group exists for its members.
> > But as it stands, nobody has said that, and its NOT BLOODY FAIR on the
> > minority of us that put a SHEDLOAD of effort in to this thing, and
> > everyone else just sits around doing nothing, yet are among the first to
> > complain when things don't go the way they want them to.
> 
> I offered help regarding posters and making the event known within the
> universities.

Thats fine, then it looks like you are one of the members who IS willing
to help. 

> > Im not suggesting everyone goes out and becomes massively active LUG
> > members, that is unrealistic. But I do think that people should pull
> > their weight, and in this, the lug over the last week has utterly
> > failed. Without exception. None of you can finger point and say 'it
> > wasnt me' because it was. None of you can say 'sorry, I was too busy'
> > because trust me, you are probably not as busy as I am, running 2
> > companies. No finger pointing, no excuses, accept that you have let down
> > the LUG when you were asked for a VERY small time commitment. 5 or 10
> > minutes is all it would have taken.
> >
> > Its too late now to send me addresses, I said right at the word go, that
> > I wouldn't have time to spend a whole day printing out and posting
> > letters, and I don't, so the offer is withdrawn. We needed to post them
> > on Friday and so now its too late.
> 
> Surely some of us can do something over the weekend and get them
> posted Monday? It can't be that late?

If people want to, then thats fine, we still need 100 addresses. I am up
to my eyeballs in work right now, so I don't know if given the weekend I
will have time to print stuff out but yes, Im still willing to give it a
try. If I have 50 names by this time tomorrow then Im willing, if I dont
then Im not. Thing is, we want to give companies a weeks notice at least
so they can schedule time for their employees to come to the day, most
companies dont work well on very short notice, so sending the letters on
monday, arriving on tuesday, its really pushing it.

> > So lets look at a week on Friday. Are you all going to let us down on
> > that too? So far its me and Martin will be the only LUG members who will
> > be manning the awareness day on Friday. Martin is taking a day off of
> > work that he can ill afford to do, I am finding some way to squeeze in
> > the hours in among everything else I have to do, which is going to be a
> > royal pain for me, but I'm doing it... is anyone else going to put their
> > money where their mouth is, or is it just going to be the two of us?
> 
> I arranged time off on the Friday and Saturday and I could have given
> some time on Friday. But due to recent events, do I even bother? A lot
> of people have working lives, families, children etc. Not everyone is
> able to commit themselves to take a day off work, day away from the
> family. By the tone of your email you seem to expect everyone on the
> list to be there. That isn't possible.

I explicitly said I dont expect everyone to become massively active lug
members, please do read what I said. However there are many many LUG
members who I am SURE will have either no job or are a student with no
classes on a friday, or things like that. in 400 people, I can promise
that more than 2 or 3 will be available and just cant be bothered. If
people cant because of work - either they cant take time off of work, or
they need their holiday days for other things, or one of a hundred
reasons, thats fine, we aren't asking anything unreasonable, we ask that
those who CAN - DO! Instead of sitting around letting those that CANT
make massive time sacrifices they can ill afford so that they CAN.

> Also I do think a lot of people on the list don't know exactly what is
> expected of them? I use Linux a little but I'm not an expert and I
> certainly don't use it in a business environment. If somebody asked me
> about samba, terminal services, networking etc then I wouldn't have a
> clue. So is there a point in somebody like me being there (and I
> admit, I'm a user not an expert).

Sure there is, thats the kind of question people SHOULD be asking and
thankyou for asking it!

YES there is plenty of reason to be there. You are a LUG member so
probably already know more about Linux than most people who will come to
the awareness day. The vast majority of techies in a company will know
about Linux, they arent the ones we are trying to get to the awareness
day. We are talking about small business owners, about managers, they
need someone to talk to, someone that the less technical people in the
LUG can talk to because BEING less technical you will be less likely to
confuse them with the technical talk that us techies are prone to use.
And us techies are needed at the day too, for when the technically aware
people start asking questions.

We need both sides of the coin covered.

> I would still like to help out as much as I can if thats possible.

Thats great! We need it, and the LUG needs it. And all those people out
there that want to use Linux but have no idea how or why, they need the
help more than anyone!

I won't apologise for my rant, obviously a number of people DO do things
for the LUG, and those of you deserve less heat, but nobody has any real
excuse for the lack of response for the awareness day. None of you is
too busy to look through the yellow pages, or to spend 10 minutes
browsing local websites. 

-- 
Michael Simms - CEO, Tux Games
http://www.tuxgames.com