TLUG's value to community ???

[Christopher Browne]

On 7/6/05, John Moniz <john.moniz-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> G. Matthew Rice wrote:
> 
> >mgjk-cpI+UMyWUv9BDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org writes:
> >
> >
> >>>What is GTALUG's value to community?  What service do we provide?  What
> >>>do "our community" get from us?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>TLUG is a users group of hobbysts and professionals.  People show up
> >>because they like what the other people showing up are doing.
> >>
> >>The community is the service.
> >>Right?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Wrong.
> >
> >William, I believe, is referring to the incorped GTALUG Inc. that has been
> >going around and collecting membership fees from people at TLUG and NewTLUG
> >and Linux World but have yet to say publicly what the money is for, who is
> >running GTALUG (the biz), why they think that they represent TLUG and NewTLUG
> >(and now westlug [or phlug??? are they the same]) plus a bunch of other
> >questions.
> >
> >In fact, I think that IBM has asked them to stop the membership drive at the
> >IBM meeting location for NewTLUG until such information comes forth.
> >
> >Hope this clarifies the question.  It probably raises many more, though ;)
> >
> >Regards,
> >
> >
> One question that it raises is about money, but TLUG money. When I
> joined back in 1999 or 2000, I paid a membership fee and received a TLUG
> membership card. That was at a computerfest when TLUG also sold a pile
> of Caldera CDs for $5 each (anyone remember that one?). I believe a few
> thousand dollars were raised that year, some people would know the
> correct amount. I thought the membership was reasonable and would have
> made a similar annual contribution had it been requested.
> 
> Some of that money may have been used up in the effort to incorporate
> TLUG (don't know if it was), but the cost of incorporation was suppose
> to have been much less than the amount collected.
> 
> The questions it raises are: how was the money spent (if any), who is
> looking after the account now, and how much $$ is left over?
> 
> I have always been curious about that. It's important to have trust in
> what happened in the past before one can support some future endeavours
> involving the collection of money.

As far as I can tell, nearly all of that money went towards the cost
of "lawyering up" to deal with incorporation.

You can set up a business corporation for just a few hundred dollars,
but for a not-for-profit, the necessity of defining various things
formally makes it quite a bit more expensive.

Further, NUANS searches were made more expensive by the fact that
several names had to be searched for until something that didn't
conflict was found.  Notably, "TLUG" conflicts with plenty of existing
names.  Tokyo may be most prominent; Toledo is only a few hours drive
away...

So far, there hasn't been indication of there being terribly much
(outside of the legal costs) that money winds up being good for.

-> GTALUG could use a projector 

Though the result would be fairly much isomorphic to the present
situation where it uses borrowed ones; there would be the IDENTICAL
need to stuff the projector some place for 29 days a month...

-> There might be a need to pay something for meeting venue.

But once you get away from "free," renting real estate winds up being
quite spectacularly expensive.

-> A traditional reason to need an incorporated LUG is to allow that
to be used for infrastructure for conferences.

But RWL comes and goes without any need of that infrastructure...

-> It would be useful for GTALUG to have an "InstallFest kit"
consisting of a few PCs, a router, and an assortment of bits of "extra
hardware".

Which might be $1K worth of hardware all tolled, with the same
situation as with the projector where it needs to get stashed most of
the time and transported for each (relevant) meeting.
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