[Fife Linux Users Group] Fife Lug Meetings

[Barrie Dempster]

On Sun, 2005-11-06 at 00:25 +0000, John A Thomson of Roundtrip Solutions
Limited wrote: 
>  Many LUGs get close ties with local colleges and
> universities so it must have some value! I've got some contacts at Adam
> Smith and didn't we have someone a while back who worked there on this list?


The close ties usually come from the LUG being created by someone at the
college or uni, but it is something we should consider as it would
generate some new members.

> Bringing some structure to the evenings would also assist with the general
> marketing and presentation of the group to prospective new members. Perhaps
> people can volunteer some presentation topics for the next couple of
> meetings. Once we know that and have a better placed venue then we can
> really market the meetings to the world. I've got some marketing channels
> for meetings e.g. BCS mailing lists, local colleges and universities and a
> few online forums. We should aim to do an A4 poster for each meeting and get
> them onto notice boards in educational establishments and companies.


Presentations are a bit pointless as there are only a few of us which
means that people will have to present multiple times and if you have
one or two that don't want to present you are left with a couple of guys
doing everything. Structure is something people keep suggesting here
too, but I don't get it... What can we have in the way of structure when
there are only a few of us and what benefit does it bring ?

Take the example of EdLUG - when there is a worthwhile/interesting
presentation they have an agenda and when there isn't they just gather
around a few tables and start discussions, this is a group with 30-50
users turning up each month. It works for them and would work for us.
The reason I no longer go to EdLUG is all the formalisation, arguments
over constitutions, people putting political arguments within the group
above the point of the group. (The point of a Linux users group is Linux
users supporting each other and enjoying each others company)

Personally I'm at the meetings to speak with geeks, people that will
laugh at a joke about TCP/IP and think it's cool that my T-Shirt has a
diagram of USENET drawn the year I was born. Structure, agendas and
presentations are great for specific formal evenings but not the norm.
The norm should be friendly chat and showing off cool stuff we have on
our laptops etc..

The best meetings we had and the ones that ran into the early hours
occurred when we all sat on the floor of James's office with Doritos,
beer and laptops. all we did then was tell stories about work, discuss
interesting stuff that was going on and have arguments over the security
of the computers on various Star Trek ships. That's what a LUG is !

I'd say until we get a few more users we should just meet informally in
a pub on it's quietest evening, it's approachable it's friendly and it's
relaxed. When someone wants to do something with more structure like a
presentation or demo we can move to somewhere like Dabs that has the
facilities and accommodate the presenter. Creating presentations just
for the sake of it makes for a boring time, I only want to hear
presentations from people who are entirely passionate about the topic
and know it inside out. I don't want people grasping for random topics
just to fill the time. We managed to fill the time before by just
sitting chatting, let's do that until someone has something to show us.

As for marketing that's something we can discuss at a meeting, I propose
it for next months agenda :-P !

what we should do at each meeting is take a volunteer to post to the
list a brief summary of the night, as we do have a few lurkers on here
that haven't shown their faces yet.

-- 
With Regards..
Barrie Dempster (zeedo) - Fortiter et Strenue

"He who hingeth aboot, geteth hee-haw" Victor - Still Game

blog:  http://reboot-robot.net
sites: http://www.bsrf.org.uk - http://www.security-forums.com
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