[Wolves] Black Country LUG?

[sparkes]

On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 09:50, fizzy wrote:
>  --- Chris Ball <chris at puremorning.co.uk> wrote:
> > sorry i may be a lowley ghost and idler, but hasn't
> > this been discussed
> > before?
> 
> It was discussed as in moving the lug as a whole to
> the pie factory, but it was decided against as we are
> really wolves lug and can't move away from wolves...
> 

When it came up before I pointed out that as soon as jono setup the lug
I suggested that we should call ourselves the Wolverhampton and Black
Country LUG.  Most references to the lug are as WolvesLUG but some used
to exist (Alan Cox's site for instance) that said Wolverhampton and
Black Country LUG.  

The name is just a name.  As jono said last year this is the
Wolverhampton LUG but that doesn't stop people traveling to
Wolverhampton.  The 'and Black Country' bit was added to widen the
catchment area but wasn't expected to last this long.  It seems
everywhere else is a little slow to catch up.  By this time it was
expected that every town would have enough linux users for them to start
a lug. The prolifilation of linux help forums seems to have stalled the
lug movement somewhat.

The last round of talks about this ended up being hijacked by someone
who wanted us to relocate to somewhere nearer the middle of the Black
Country.  This is stupid on several counts.  Nowhere in the Black
Country is as easy for everyone to get to than Wolverhampton. 
Wolverhampton is on all the major roads, the rail, the metro and
hundreds of bus routes.  No where else would be so acessable whatever
the reasons to move. And more importantly Wolverhampton was very
important from day one as it was a meeting at the university that led to
the creation of the lug and many lug members have connections to the
university.  It would be stupid to disasociate ourselves from this
source of potential members just to get a cow pie ;-)

I am in favour of visits to other establishments but we are running out
of places that have cheap/bring your own drinks, food and room for 20
people that don't cost us a penny.  If we can find somewhere like this
then I would be for a move away from the standard.  But it should be in
Wolverhampton (or very near by) because this is primaryly the Wolves LUG
(with a catchment area that takes in the Black Country, parts of Staffs
and perhaps a little Shropshire) the black country tag was one I insited
should be added in the early days and was never used in real life and
shouldn't be used to hijack the lug and move it away from it's real
home.

If anyone wants to travel to visit the lug that is fantastic but we
should really have a semi-perminant base (in Wolverhampton) that the
majority of meetings are so people don't get lost and fail to come to
lug meetings.  If we can find somewhere that meets the requirements
listed by Aq with my addition that it should be accessible to the people
on the list (ie Wolverhampton or very near by) with a minimum of fuss.

I would prefer a venue with more flexable seating arrangements so we can
have the kind of get togethers we started with.  the current arrangement
leaves us spread out too thinly and we are in danger of forming cliques
and excluding potential members.  Already we have people sitting in
similar positions each week and some people seem to be getting cut off
at the ends of the table.  It would also be better to have a whiter wall
to project on for the times we do have presentations.  Newbies have no
contact now with the lug as a whole and might be put off by the cliquey
atmosphere.  Not the freindly atmosphere we always endevoured to have. 
Let's not lose the atmosphere for the sake of a cheap curry ;-)

food for thought (and it wasn't the seven quid special either) ;-)

> > chris
> fizz
sparkes