On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 03:53:13PM +0100, TheVeech wrote: > Just curious. Anyone a member? If so, what's yours like? >
My local one is quite active. Well, there are two near me, Hampshire and Surrey. Hampshire meets every month on or near the first saturday in the month. We have two locations at opposite ends of the county to make it easy for people all over the place to attend. All our meets are "bring a box / installfest" style where people bring computers to have problems fixed, or show stuff off, or just socialise. We used to have pub meets on alternate months but these became less popular as people couldn't easily have a drink due to having to drive home, the size of Hampshire being an issue there - I am unlikely to drive 50 miles for a pint. Also people found it frustrating that they had to wait two months between meetings. We have talks given at every meet - some long and in depth, more recently we're trying "lightning talks" of no more than about 5-10 mins. We video the talks and put them online in many formats, including uploading to google. http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=hampshire+linux+user+group > I'd have thought they were a bit of a geekfest, not having been to one, > but I'm probably way off the mark. Trouble is, the one for my neck of > the woods is supposed to be active but its website hasn't been updated > for a long time. These days, is it time better spent online? > You don't say where you are. Some LUGs do indeed go quiet or die. This is often due to a lack of push from the LUGMaster or a low membership count. If nobody gets off their butt to organise stuff then nothing happens and the LUG wains. In the LUGs that have regular meetings with a sustained effort there is clearly more life in them than those that dont organise meetings. Some areas have multiple LUGs, maybe one at the county level, and more at the City/Town level. I know Sussex has two, Hampshire has three LUGs, but often there is overlap between them. There is almost always co-operation between the LUGs, although in my opinion nowhere near enough of that. If your local LUG is dying, give it a poke on their mailing list, see what people have planned, and offer to help. There are way to many people (and this isn't specicially directed at you) in the UK standing by looking on saying "that LUG is dead" without actually getting off their arse and doing something about it. IMHO. If the LUG really is dead, with the LUGMaster AWOL you can ask to take it over and if the members agree that's a good thing then off you go. Cheers, Al. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
