Topic for December? [was: Re: [Discuss] the state of VLUG meetings at present]

[Patrick]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:48:33 -0700
"Andrew Willard" wrote:

> Larry Gagnon wrote:
> 
> > Comments and discussion and ideas greatly appreciated.
> 
> Everything you said is true. I will add a comment... or two...
> 
> Who exactly is going to organize/do all the above mentioned items?
> The only people in the past few years even remotely interested in
> keeping the club going "have" been attempting to keep the meetings
> going, have maintained the server, have kept our brochures at local
> businesses... I say have because those individuals are tried of doing
> everything. Getting anyone else to do anything is like herding cats.

I've only been here a few months, don't know how to maintain the
server, and I'm good at herding cats.  Just ask my cat.

Maybe you've already tried this, but here's a thought...

When you needed help with the mailing list issues, all I could
say about that was [...].  Really, I don't have much of a clue
about mail-servers, except the Mercury one for Windows and that
skill is probably not transferable [besides, I've forgotten most
of that by now].  What about something simpler?  You must have
smaller jobs some hapless volunteers off the street could cover.

For example, who's taking our brochures?  Same businesses who
offer discounts?  I want a paper route.

Who posts the FAQ?  I haven't seen it in a while.  If I can find
a command-line mailer, I can make it a weekly, monthly or biweekly
cron job.

I'm not above burning the odd ISO either.  They take time to
download over dialup, but put `wget -c $distURL && break' in a
while : loop and it'll finish eventually.

Who asks for help with this stuff?  Well, who?

I'm sure most of us are pretty busy, without a whole hell of a lot
of time on our hands, but there may be some little things we can
get out of your way, and leave you more time for other things.

I'm not too clear on what the regular, day-to-day work of running
this club is [except for the ISO thing, the examples above are
taken straight from your paragraph, above that], but if you can
describe it in detail, break the big jobs down into smaller ones,
there should be people around with enough spare time, and the
inclination to do it.

What about making this the topic of the December meeting?  I see
November is already taken.  If there's not much of a turnout for
something like this, I'll know you're right, but I'd like for you
to be wrong about this [and you might also].

> 
> For anyone that has/is part of an organized club the story is normally
> the same... a small minority keep the fires burning while everyone else
> sits back and does nothing, or very little, but enjoy the fruits.> 
> 
> For those of you willing to come forward and DO something, the annual
> general meeting is scheduled for the November monthly meeting. Those
> of you wishing to run in the election should forward your name and
> the position you would like to me.

I don't know who to vote for, and am not qualified for any of the
vacant positions, but I would like to help.  To everyone holding
down their current positions, thank you for all your hard work.

Getting Tuesday, 2007/Nov/13 off was fairly easy.  I've traded my
night job for an evening job, but the boss really likes my work
and this is plenty of advance notice.

BTW, sorry to be so quiet lately.  The jet-lag was killing me
[if you've travelled any great distance, or worked graveyard
shifts for any length of time, you already know what jet-lag
is].  I think I can handle daylight now.



Thanks, really,

Patrick.

-- 
I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes...
		-- Larry Wall in  <8538 at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>