Re: Meetings and all things morlug.

On 9/28/06, Andrei Smirnov <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> If I were to single out the main point of what Thomas suggests I would say that our prime objective is to promote Linux. No matter how informative or entertaining we can make our meetings for ourselves it does not really make our group stronger. After all, I can get all the technical info I need from the web or from this mailing list, or from linux magazines.
>


Andrei, while advocacy and promotion are good things, I think you have
a serious misunderstanding of the issue at hand...

Morgantown has a *lot* of real live Linux users. Seriously. The reason
that MorLUG meetings are empty is not because there is a shortage of
Linux users. People don't come to MorLUG meetings because people don't
*want* to come to MorLUG meetings.

Meetings need to compel users to attend. Bradley Kuhn of the FSF, Jeff
Dike's UML, Warren's Mepis, Dave Smith's giant thin-client lab,
somebody's (?) embedded Linux boxen... these are things that drew
people. The meeting should be an event, not just some scheduled thing
that happens every 4 weeks.

The second factor, as Mike Bond said, is to plan the meetings in
advance and promote them. You must let people know what is going on,
don't expect them to check out the website every 30 days or join the
mailing list - advertise the meeting, not the group.

- DR

-- 
David A. Riggs <[email protected]>