TLUG's value to community ???

[John Macdonald]

On Sat, Jul 09, 2005 at 10:10:11PM -0400, William Park wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 11:42:59PM -0400, Paul Mora wrote:
> > On 08 Jul 2005 16:47:38 -0400, Tim Writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > Which is precisely the problem Matt has been pointing out. He (and
> > > others) have been "representing" TLUG in various ways for a long
> > > time primarily through volunteer activities. For example, he
> > > coordinated speakers for a couple of years. Yet he's not formally a
> > > member of GTALUG and neither is he fully informed about its purpose
> > > and activities. He suggested GTALUG (or rather its executive) make a
> > > presentation at an upcoming TLUG meeting to let everybody know what
> > > the heck they're up to. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
> > 
> > Me too.
> > 
> > I'd love to see some information on what's been going on in GTALUG, like
> > - meeting minutes (or excerpts, if us "non-members" can't see them)
> > - Constitution and/or manifesto, describing the purpose of the organization
> > 
> > I've been asking about this stuff every few months, and the answers I
> > get are "it's coming real soon now", but nothing ever does.
> > 
> > Also, along with a presentation, a nice handout, or softcopy
> > (obtainable from the GTALUG site), in the form of a FAQ, would be
> > nice.
> 
> I'm opposed to this.  This takes time/money, without being tied to
> revenue.
> 
> Look, people...  CLUE has cost.  I don't see CLUE going around detailing
> their fiscal balance at TLUG meeting.  GTALUG is less than a year old,
> and people are already complaining about us not publishing our books for
> CLUE people to examine.  What is this?  It's like GM complaining about
> Toyota not publishing list of their suppliers.  I get the feeling that
> this is bubbling up from something that happened before my time.
> 
> Let's move forward...
> 
> My original aim was this:
>     GTALUG is not doing much now.  But, we should be.  So, what do we
>     (as group) want to do?  What kind of "service" should we provide?
>     Who is "our community"? ...

Uh, no, this is not GM asking Toyota to explain its finances.
This is the employees of Toyota asking the people who claim
to have created a union to explain why they should pay union
dues and join this union when they were happy working without
a union.

I have yet to see any need to membership dues justified -
there have been a few handwaving arguments that might be
fleshed out into true justifications with some work, but I'm
still somewhat skeptical.

The fact that you seem to be searching for ways to spend the
money and accomplish services tells me that there isn't a
clear need.

Worrying about whether IBM will continue to provide a location
seems ridiculous.  A group that focusses on computer issues
will always have some members that work for large enough
organizations that finding one of them to provide a location
will always be possible, and having a formal organization and
dues will ot affect the issues for this in the slightest.

For this kind of group, a formal organization and dues is not
an especially important facet is its success.  The important
thing is for people to be interested.  Out of those interested
people, a small subset that is enthused will make things happen.

The Toronto Perl Mongers group (TPM) just finished putting on
a conference (YAPC::NA).  It ran for 3 days, with 3 parallel
tracks of talks each day, and an extra track for one day.
There was a cruise on Lake Ontario with a dinner one evening
for all participants.

But TPM is not a formal non-profit organization.  There are no
membership dues.  There are simply people who are interested
and enthused (and, for the moment, burned out - but most of
them will regain their enthusiasm, and new people will replace
those that burn out permanently).  It is true that TPM did
need to use the auspices of a couple of formal organizations
in this process.  The Perl Foundation (a U.S. non-profit)
provided the umbrella structure, and LPI provided the ability
to accept Canadian credit card deposits.  For a once in a
decade kind of event, makig use of outside resources for a
few items is reasonable.  For the ongoing meetings, though,
the informal group structure works fine.  Individual members
provide the necessary services:

    - monthly meetings
      + arrange meeting locations for the monthly talks (there
        have been 2 locations over the 10 years)
      + arrange speakers for the onthly talks (usually members
        volunteer, occassionally an outside speaker is brought
        in - sometimes a local non-perl person with a related
        topic, sometimes a perl person is brought in from afar
        like Damian Conway has been a few times over the years)
      + record and publish audio recordings of talks at the
        monthly meetings
      + arrange the pub for after-talk social discussion
    - host a web site
    - host a mailing list
    - arrange ride sharing for trips to other groups

None of this required dues or a formal organization, just the
personal incentive of the interested participants.

So, why does TLUG (which you are renaming to GTALUG) need all
this baggage and what does it actually gain us?

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