Re: Renaming of SVLUG Meetup to SFLUG Meetup

Quoting Sarah Newman ([email protected]):

> What about making it a meta group - SFBayLUG or something like that?
> That precludes SVLUG losing access and looking dead, but has a name
> which opens up (re)posting really any LUG event in the bay area, including
> in south bay.

That's IMO a substantially better name idea than the one I suggested to
Kevin, so thanks.

It's also, FWIW, one with some history:  When Art Tyde and Dave Sifry
were founding what became BALUG around 1997 (which for years thereafter
met in the upstairs banquet room at the Four Seas Restaurant in
Chinatown), Art kept fiddling with the group's name, and for a while
called it San Francisco Bay Area Linux Group.[1]

Without objecting to your idea, I'll point out that Meetup, Inc. builds
into the provided infrastructure a strong 'walled garden' orientation.
People cannot get notification except through meetup.com membership, nor
do RSVP except through that.  So, you really cannot run a meta LUG
there:  You can try, but will be hobbled by the Meetup, Inc.-captive
nature of the thing.

(I'm trying really hard to not recap my anti-Meetup rant, here, but see
details under subhead 'Meetup is Inflexible' on
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/meetup.html .)


> Personally I don't mind getting SF notifications, though I probably won't go.
> I might go to peninsula events.

If you get SF notifications that you think are interesting, please mail
a copy to me, because I decline to be Meetup member for reasons outlined
in my essay.


> That's probably true for folks who live and work in one location. People
> who work in one location and live in the other may be willing
> to either stick around late or go home early for an event.

I know.  I used to be one on multiple occasions, such as when I lived
above The CoffeeNet in SOMA and either drive or took CalTrain + bicycle
to work at VA Linux Systems in Sunnyvale.  But, FWIW, even though I
attended almost all LUG meetings in both SF and the South Bay, I very
rarely encountered other people who did that (to my knowledge; of course,
I didn't always know particiulars of people's residences and
workplaces).  I _think_ that has been relatively rare for Bay Area Linux
people -- and more so now that SF rents have gone skywards and rush hour
traffic has become dramatically worse.


[1] Eventually the group's name converged on the name Sifry had given
the mailing list, which was 'balug'.  Ironically, the exact same thing 
happened at this LUG, which in 1997 was still the Silicon Valley
Computer Society PC-UNIX SIG, after Rob Walker set up a Majordomo
mailing list for it called 'svlug'.