[Discuss] Results from VLUG's AGM

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-12-12 16:47-0800 David Lee wrote:

> I'm finding this rather ironic :)
>
> Years ago, we started as a(n) SIG at BB&C in the back room. The numbers 
> started getting bigger and bigger. It was amazing how many we packed in that 
> little room!
> Then we finally ended up at Uvic.
> Now the numbers are dwindling and dwindling and we're going back to a room at 
> BB&C.
>
> There's a story in there somewhere. :)
>
> Maybe we should find out why the numbers are going down.

One reason is that in the old days Linux was exciting and new but a real
pain to install so you could have an interesting and viable club that
focussed on installfests and presenting neat new software packages (e.g.,
KDE, GNOME, the GIMP, EMACS, GNUPG) which hardly anybody had ever seen
demonstrated before.

Now Linux is main-stream.  For example, installs are largely boring these
days (unless you, ahem, try cutting-edge hardware) and KDE, et. al are
largely old hat.  At the same time, Linux is now deployed in a huge variety
of ways but with users who tend to be focussed only on a tiny subset of the
Linux possibilities. Some LUGs have adjusted well to these changes and are
extremely active, but currently that does not seem to apply to VLUG.
However, there is lots of hope for the VLUG future since the potential
exists for VLUG to again become as successful as other LUGs.

One place you should start is publicity. There are lots of Linux
users in town who are potential club members, but they may have an extremely
focussed Linux interest, and they regard their time as valuable. So they may
not be too interested in general Linux presentations unless they are
strongly reminded about them.  For example, if there was a timely reminder
on list about each forthcoming meeting, and the meeting had a reasonably
interesting general Linux topic, I would probably show up.  Just putting up
the meeting notice on the website is not good enough to attract me (unless I
remember to actually look at the website near the correct day), and I
suspect that is true for lots of other potential attendees as well.

In sum, to get the crowds out again you need well-organized meetings with a
definite topic, and better publicity of those meetings.  Also, I don't think
the BOD should take a committee approach to this since inevitably something
will fall between the cracks.  Thus, in my view the absolutely most
important BOD (ex-officio?) position is meetings coordinator, and I hope for
the sake of the club's future that somebody has volunteered for that role
who has the time/energy to do a good job.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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