introducing the MetaLUG Foundation (introducing metalug, part II)

[Interlug]

On Mon, 2006-30-10 at 09:32 -0400, David J Patrick wrote:
> With the help of more the legally and bureaucratically inclined
> members of our little community, I hope to realise a Foundation 

I'm a fan of interlug (metalug) communication and I applaud your
enthusiasm David.  I also applaud your hot chocolate recipe; that stuff
is awesome!  

I'll add a few items that come to my mind when I think of each of the
goals you've listed.  

> whose
> goals are;
> 
> 1) identify, catalog and map LUGs everywhere.

Some of these exist.  In my opinion this is a maintenance issue more
than anything else.  Translation tools to other formats might be cool.
Wanna know when a new LUG pops up within X-kilometres of your home /
office?  Could an RSS feed do this?  Automating updates and hiatuses by
scraping the LUG web sites might work.  

There was a map / poster of Canadian LUGs at the last Toronto
Linuxworld.  I think CLUE still has it.  Tying the auto-updates (above)
into an OpenStreetMap mashup would be pretty cool.  (OpenStreetMap is a
wiki-style roadmap of everything.  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ If you
are into maps or GPS, do not visit this link.  It will kill your
productivity.)

> 2) to foster synergies between LUGs and create effective channels both
> inter-lug and upstream.

Shared hierarchical calendar anybody?  The San Fransisco Bay area has a
metric boatload of LUGs and a shared calendar so a visitor can find a
nearby LUG during most any time period.  http://linuxmafia.com/bale/
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do this (easily) for any area of
interest?  Planning a trip to Kenora?  Where are the local LUGs?  When
do they meet?  What are the scheduled topics?  

Ideally this calendar will update automatically so that individual LUG
organizers don't need to update ANOTHER site.  And users can easily
monitor portions of the calendar they care about.  Is this another RSS
feed crossed with an icalendar?   

> 3) to aggregate resources to help make the creation or maintenance of
> a LUG easy and fun.

Make it easy to find your LUG.  Make it easy for new members to take an
interest in your LUG (because they are aware of the cool topics you have
on the schedule) and you will have additional hands to share the
organizing tasks.  

> 4) to promote the use of GNU/linux and/or FLOSS.

Ah.  This is the easy part.  Linux keeps getting better every day.  

I'm not sure that a formal foundation is required for any of my specific
suggestions.  Perhaps I'm just thinking "too small".  I see effective
interlug communication as a dialogue between people, not between
committees or foundations (again, likely my personal bias).  Go visit
another local LUG, in addition to your regular haunt.  I've seen other
TLUG folks doing this (Hi William, Hi Jason!) and they seem not to have
suffered from departing the "416" on a temporary basis.  

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