re-thinking LUGs and early planning for the first Canadian LUG summit

[Christopher Browne]

On Nov 7, 2007 6:41 PM, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 02:04:45PM -0500, David J Patrick wrote:
> > PING !
> >
> > did this actually get out to the list ?
> > is it possible that ~40 people had something to say about someone elses
> > troubles using an iPod, but /nooooobody/ has a comment regarding a national
> > LUG summit ? Am I alone on this one ?
> >
> > still hoping it's my mail configuration that's busted, and not just general
> > apathy.
>
> I honestly don't know why people think someone in vancouver cares what a
> LUG in toronto is doing.  For the most part they are only interesting to
> the people in the local area.

I can appreciate some parts of that; I am not at all sure that it
makes sense to push quickly to try to do something "national" in
nature.  This is, after all, the second largest country in the world,
and the distances between locations are fairly daunting, sometimes in
surprising ways.

Last year, I travelled to Halifax for Christmas holidays, and wound up
taking the train, and eventually, paying a fairly staggering sum to
upgrade my trip back to include a private rail cabin.  (Which is a
VERY nice way to get from Halifax to Montreal, I must say!)  I did
that in lieu of paying a pretty staggering fee for an airline ticket.

This year, I'll be flying to Texas, and what with the weakness of the
$USD, it's costing me about 1/4 as much as the train cost, last year,
and 1/6 of the possible air fare.

The point is that travelling across the country is remarkably costly
in time and price.

I think it would be more than ambitious enough to begin with a
regional endeavour, just hitting on Ontario.

After all, we didn't just see the "Canada LinuxFest;" we saw the
*Ontario* LinuxFest.  And it is not an event that stands alone; there
is something similar held in Alberta that draws in part from BC and
from nearby US states.  And there is a Portland-based "Fest" that
probably draws people from Vancouver.

This isn't about creating regional disparities, but rather regional
examples :-).

> So in other words I think any such effort is a complete waste of time
> and energy.  Perhaps I am not alone which could explain the lack of
> comments (it did make it through just fine, I remember reading it).

I expect there's room for there to exist both interested and
disinterested parties, in this regard.  :-)

My suspicion is that if I'm planning to spend $1K on travel costs, I'd
probably rather spend that on something like Debianconf that is more
technically targeted than a "LUG organization improvement" conference.
 That's just me, but I doubt I'm alone in that.  There's a conference
in Vancouver that I may catch in February - it's rather more
technically targeted than a "LUG summit."

And as a definite "tech-head", politics definitely comes second to me...
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