(poll) What kind of meeting do you want?

[Christopher Browne]

On 4/22/05, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2005 at 12:13:42AM -0400, Paul Mora wrote:
> > On 4/21/05, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > > But, definitely, not worth $20 membership.  People truly don't give
> > > shit about the laundry list of expenses.  "Your expense is your
> > > business.  What do I get for $20?" is people's bottom line.
> >
> > As it rightly should be.  People want to see some return on their
> > investment, on their dollar.  Currently, the investment is time, the
> > time we take to go to the meetings, listen to the speaker, and learn
> > something new.  Maybe that will lead to them being a speaker, or
> > contributing in some other way.
> >
> > What expenses are there on the normal TLUG meetings?  The facilities
> > are free, and the speakers are volunteers.  Where are the costs?
> 
> 1.  Facility is the main thing.  It's free, only because we're
>     trespassing on UofT property.
> 
> 2.  Projector is another big issue.  It's free, only because we harasse
>     Chris with threat of ex-communication.

I bring one sometimes, when asked.  Occasionally I grouse a bit
because it's a bit bulky and irritating to carry around, but that's
really not a big deal :-).

> 3.  Then, there are minor issue of cost for booth at trade show, flyers,
>     labels, CDs, plastic laminators, food for the volunteers, etc.

This misses a _really_ vital item...

4.  Hosting of TLUG web site, mailing lists, and such.

It's well and nice that this has been contributed freely; it's still
something that has a not insubstantial cost.

I'm getting _less_ convinced over time that having a large formal
organization is of terribly much value.

The big value that used to be perceived was that an incorporated LUG
would be a useful "infrastructure" to use as the seed around which
conferences could crystallize.  That was certainly true for ALS
(Atlanta Linux Symposium) in yesteryear.  It's NOT the case with
LinuxWorld.  It wasn't the case when the Debian annual conference was
held in Toronto the other year.

Having a big formal organization _hasn't_ been necessary to get
interesting speakers in; there have been quite a lot pop in under
auspices of other things, whether that be Perl Mongers drawing in Perl
illuminatis, LinuxWorld drawing in Jon Hall, and other such.

Indeed, it may be that the Real Right Answer is that the proper point
of a LUG, in Toronto, is to be biased to those that are interested in
the ongoing development of the OS kernel written by Linus and the cast
of thousands, and for a lot of activities to be associated with the
numerous "SIGS" that are interested in other things.

Which would mean that what we _really_ need is to solicit people
interested in leading SIGs that can "feed" more individual needs, so
that a few people head to Perl Mongers, some more to the Python group,
some to the BSD group, some to a group of Debian fans.  I keep
thinking about starting up some form of PostgreSQL "SIG", which
strikes me as a more useful idea than making TLUG more complicated. 
There's a Toronto Java users group; there's probably room for plenty
more...
-- 
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