[SWLUG] Event organisation meeting

[Matthew Moore]

My thoughts on the whole thing are roughly as follows:

The loose, informal structure we have is a *very* good thing, as it does 
mean that people can just go ahead and organise something if they want 
too.  Without having to seek some kind of commitee approval.  However we 
need to make sure that running events is easy to do and something that's 
encouraged.  I would say at the moment there is a fair bit of support 
given when you are doing things.  I did have a lot of help when doing 
the most recent lightning talks.

We don't need a single point of contact setting up.  We already have 
one, it's the mailing list.  Putting that kind of load on one person is 
probably going to end up being counter productive.  If the mailing list 
is the main point of contact, it spreads the load a lot more.

If we actually manage to do enough stuff that means a bank account/some 
kind of financial organisation is needed we'll revisit it.  We've got 
people in the LUG who've got lots of experience at that sort of thing 
(me included, I've run clubs for a long time and have had a heavy 
involvement in student unions, also my father has a wealth of experience 
in finances for organisations like this).  For the time being we should 
focus on organising some kick-arse events!

To address Neil's point specifically, I do think that posting up on the 
list before a social meeting, informing people of your intention to go 
would be useful as then people know there definitely will be someone 
there and then posting up a post meeting synopsis so people can see what 
happened.

For Sam's point, then if you organise an event and stress the FLOSS 
nature of that event, then I personally don't care.  I doubt that many 
of the group would be fussed either.  I think we should focus on 
actually doing something rather than getting bogged down in discussions 
over names.

So with that in mind, who wants to come to a meeting specifically for 
organising events?  Where would be best to meet?  I'm happy to travel 
(Swansea or Cardiff are fine, Carmarthen might be a bit far) and pick 
people up on the way.  Alternatively we could have a natter on 
IRC/Skype/somethingelse.

I would specifically like to organise another lightning talk, but would 
happily help others with things.

Any thoughts?  Opinions?

Matt