Re: Renaming of SVLUG Meetup to SFLUG Meetup

Kevin D. and I had an offlist chat, and I believe he'll soon post about
a revised plan for the Meetup (naming it back).  But I wanted to post a
few thoughts, while they're fresh in my mind:

Renaming the meetup to no longer be called 'SVLUG - Silicon Valley Linux
User Group' is something done at my request, so, those who disapproved,
please blame me and not Kevin -- but here's why I made that suggestion:

1.  Kevin being now no longer local substantially increases the risk 
of the 'SVLUG' meetup going dead and unmaintainable, an outcome we've 
_already experienced once before_, and would like to avoid recurring.

This meetup was created by a different generous volunteer in 2012, and
administered by him for the following year.  After a year, however, 
that volunteer ceased paying the required organiser fees (either
$180/year or $120/year for the two most-used plans, each entitling the
organiser to operate three meetups), at which point the meetup became
_frozen_ -- without SVLUG either being warned or having any right to 
remedy the situation.  Nobody had access to alter or remove obsolete
information and, instead of being an asset, the meetup became a problem,
giving Meetup denizens the inaccurate impression SVLUG was dead.

This unhappy situation persisted until Kevin volunteered to readopt
the defunct meetup, perhaps a year or so later.  Meetup, Inc.'s iron
rule is:  Nobody gets access unless someone is feeding the meter.
(In particular, Meetup, Inc. doesn't acknowledge SVLUG as a stakeholder
in the meetup.  As far as they're concerned, they own it, and, at any
given time, some primary meetup organiser rents it from them.)

As I've said, I have views about Meetup, Inc. and its for-profit online
service, but they're not relevant here.  What _is_ relevant is that I've
been concerned about making sure what happened in 2013 doesn't happen
again.  As long as Kevin was (generously) providing SVLUG's meeting
venue and arranging speakers at Cavium in San Jose, I wasn't very
worried about the meetup going frozen again.  In the latter half of 2018
when he left Cavium and went to San Francisco, and ceased arranging 
SVLUG meeting space and speakers, however, my concern returned.

2.  Wishful thinking notwithstanding, Silicon Valley and San Francisco 
are different places with almost zero group-membership overlap.

In 1992, just as I was first using Linux, I had recently moved from the
mid-Peninsula back to San Francisco to help a friend build and operate
The CoffeeNet in South of Market, the then-famous Linux-based Internet
cafe, and lived in an apartment upstairs.  For eight years (until I
moved to Menlo Park in 2000), I was almost unique as a member of the
Linux communities of both San Francisco and Silicon Valley.  For a
while, I tried to organise carpools from The CoffeeNet to SVLUG
meetings, and, to my mild annoyance and amusement, the only result was
that a bunch of people showed up, sans car, glad to have a free ride in
my car to the South Bay and back.

My rule of thumb was (and remains) 'Most San Franciscans refuse to go
south of Army Street' (what is now Cesar Chavez St.).  And South Bay
denizens tend to be almost as bad, _talking_ about driving or taking
CalTrain to San Francisco, but not _doing_ it.

So, when I belatedly realised a week or so ago that Kevin had, since
January 2019, repurposed his 'SVLUG - Silicon Valley Linux User Group'
meetup solely for technical talks at a business in San Francisco's
Mission District, I thought 'Hmm, this could be a problem.'  We in the
South Bay might imagine San Francisco being an outpost of Silicon
Valley, but, take my word for it as a longtime resident of the place
that tellingly calls itself 'The City':  San Franciscans tend towards an
insular attitude the likes of which is seldom seen outside NYC.

Even if SVLUG simply says 'Fine, whatever Kevin arranges in SF is hereby
declared to be an SVLUG meeting', the fact is that SF just isn't Silicon 
Valley, has little contact with it, and that won't change unless, say,
Elon Musk waves a magic wand and opens hyperloop-based 200 MPH trains
between Santa Clara to SF with 50 cent fares.  Therefore, _if_ the present
trend of only SF meetup events were to persist (as seemed likely until
Sarah started talking seriously again about HackerDojo), my view is that
Kevin should use a name reflecting the SF focus.

If the facts on the ground change, great!