[Wolves] LUG State of the Nation Address

[Adam Sweet]

Hi all

TL;DR - LUGs are dying, need your help.

Until the last few years our mailing list was very active and the LUG
spawned numerous projects. I imagine some of you found the LUG as a
result of at least one of those :) Our meetings were boisterous and
routinely had 10-15 people. I remember 26 people at one Christmas get
together.

Over the last 5-10 years, many of our members have moved on in their
lives, careers and geographically. I think we've all noticed the tail
off in mailing list activity and meeting numbers, though for what it's
worth, those that do attend are a good bunch whom I consider to be
important friends that I look forward to seeing every fortnight.
Nevertheless it's become apparent that as people have moved on, not many
new members are coming in.

I've taken a look at some other LUG mailing lists, there's a clear
pattern across the board and many have gone dormant. In that respect,
we're not doing too badly.

Some LUGs have seen a resurgence. Locally, Birmingham LUG is still
very active and Shrops have a new lease of life thanks to John Alexander.

To ensure we don't slowly fade out, we need to encourage new members and
keep hold of those we already have. To do that, we need to promote
ourselves and organise stuff people want to come to. There are some
posts coming on these, but to summarise I'd like us to:

1) Tour the LUG meetings around different venues every other month or
so, while keeping our regular base at the Royal Tiger in between.

2) Do a fun activity every couple of meetings

3) Hold talks

Also I'd like us to encourage an atmosphere of participation on the
mailing list. If you have a thought about something, see a news article
or have a question that might be of interest to people here then I want
you to post it here. I found Mark Ellse's two posts interesting recently.

I know a few people have felt put off from posting here in
the past and some have left the LUG as a result so I'd like to
ask you all to consider your tone and respond in the positive rather
than the negative.

Finally, I'd like to ask you to have a think about the kind of LUG you
want, what is needed to create it and how we can promote ourselves. I
don't have the time or brain space to be a sole driving force but
whatever we do has to come from within the group, so can you help with
the above?

Adam