How was the get-together?
jon.maddog.hall@gmail.com
jonhall80 at comcast.net
Tue Feb 25 17:45:26 EST 2020
The venue was fine for dinner and beer, but bad for a "meeting" over-all for a couple of reasons:
o It was too noisy
o we had two tables where we all sat, and while each table could talk among themselves, it was hard to talk across tables. It was also hard to move between tables. It would have been better on the other side of the restaurant in the little alcove where we sometimes met.
o I do not know if the second floor of Martha's is even still available. I did not ask and it has been over ten years since I have been up there.
Two ideas came up around the meeting. One idea was to have a meeting once a quarter instead of once a month. Another idea was to have two meetings a quarter, one for "seasoned people" and one for "newbies".
In the past we had a real structure (at Marthas) of:
o dinner downstairs
o quick introductions
o announcements
o newbie talk
o seasoned talk
o return downstairs for beer
The newbies could stay for the "seasoned talk" if they wished, or leave.
For a while we even brought beer upstairs to the meeting, but I would not support that anymore because I perceived it made anyone under 21 feel awkward.
The whole "meeting thing" is relatively simple:
o find a place to meet
- take suggestions from people who live in the area. Best place has a room that you can have for the meeting and dinner. The place we had in Manchester worked fine, IMHO. There are probably other restaurants that have private rooms for "events".
- pick a place and reserve a years worth of nights and dates (four nights) avoiding holidays, etc.
o Create a list of topics to discuss
- send out a message asking what topics people want to talk about
- make a list of these topics
- do a sort and uniq on this list
- send out the list and ask people to vote for their top four (assuming a quarterly meeting)
- select the top six
- send out the top six and ask if people could talk on the topics
- select the top four that have potential speakers
- ask the speakers which quarter they wish to talk
o Now you have the place, speaker, topic and date
- send out the invitation
o Have access to a white board, LCD projector, etc. needed by the speaker. This is a lot easier these days since LCD projectors now weigh 5 pounds instead of 50 pounds, and cost a couple hundred dollars instead of a couple thousand dollars.
When we had a "special speaker" that needed travel costs met, most of the members dug into their pockets and pulled out money along with pocket lint.
We often "passed the hat" at meetings to make money for incidentals.
We often did some "ground breaking work" in getting speakers in that other LUGS like the Durham group or even the Dartmouth group took advantage.
Even BLU (meeting at MIT) tapped into some of our speakers a couple of times, and we were glad they did.
I did this for ten years. 120 different meetings, not including "special meetings" where I had "special speakers" (and special places like the Daniel Webster College Auditorium) because I had been in the industry 25-35 years (at the time). I stopped because I was traveling so much internationally that I could not be guaranteed of being at the meeting to meet and greet the speaker and make sure things went right.
It took me about an hour a week on the average after things were set up.
Others took over, but stopped after a while. One wanted to make the group "more formal" and tried to set up non-profit status (for good reasons) that took lots of time and wore people out. Another person took over for about two meetings. Then we had the group in Manchester who had several good meetings.
I think things could be better now in a lot of ways. (GNU)Linux is a lot more prevalent now. The prevalence of FOSSH in computer science and our lives is much greater than in 1995 when I started the group (actually it was started by a guy at UNH Durham, but he only ran it for one meeting, then abandoned it).
I think it would be a lot easier to get access to a college or university meeting room at places like the Nashua Community College on Rt 101A, or New Hampshire Technical College in Manchester, St. Anselm, Rivier University, Southern New Hampshire University or even some company that uses Linux or FOSSH a lot.
MakeItLab in Nashua has a medium sized meeting room, but it could be crowded with a larger meeting.
We also have more online tools that can help with meetings.
The "watch, learn, and try" is a great idea, but with users computers might require electric outlets, power cords, etc. and you have to take things slower than "just a presentation".
A canned presentation for "newbies" might go a long way. We used to hand out a DVD and a set of links to beginning articles. These days we could simply point to one of the various "newbie" sites and act as "real-life" mentors and people who could answer questions. But this has to be advertised to get newbies aware of it and come in.
I found it interesting that even when we were "going strong" I would meet up with GNU/Linux users both newbie and seasoned who would say that they had never heard of GNHLUG....never knew we had meetings. Doing things like writing articles for the Hippo, putting fliers up in laundromats, food stores, getting discussed on talk radio like NPR (yes, I actually had a session with them one time).
Sooooo, anyone want to raise their hand for the glory of doing this? I would volunteer again but I will probably be spending a month in Brazil soon....so I would still have the same issues as when I stopped in 2005.
maddog
> On February 25, 2020 at 2:51 PM Tom Buskey <tom at buskey.name> wrote:
>
> I've been to a few of the Dartmouth GNHLUG meeting. They would typically meet at a restaurant before the meeting before going to a quiet room on campus.
>
> I think the important thing is to meet. A topic/speaker/etc can evolve from that.
>
> I recently went to a wood turner's meeting. They had a "try doing this" demo before the meeting where others could watch, learn, and try. The formal meeting would do club business, do show & tell of what people made on their lathes, then finish with a demo of a technique.
>
> The early days of Linux (and Unix) groups were like that. Linux Journal and other magazines were like that too. Things were starting out and you didn't know where things were going (kde vs gnome vs everything before that) so there was always something. I remember a demo of someone playing with Xfig on a new laptop that could compile Linux in the background w/o slowing down.
>
> I've been working with Openstack and Openshift, but it's not something I could bring to a meeting. My Openstack server at home is a Dell R710. I have seen a 5 stack Raspberry Pi Kubernetes cluster demo'd.
>
> What would show & tell with Linux look like today?
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 3:52 PM Bruce Labitt < bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net mailto:bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net > wrote:
>
> > > As much as I enjoy eating out, the venue was too noisy for a meeting.
> > If there's a meeting, it would be good to be able to hear folks. It was
> > difficult to hear people talking only 2 or 3 people away. My 2 cents.
> > What I was able to hear was both interesting and informative, and
> > occasionally amusing :)
> >
> > On 2/24/20 2:57 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
> > > On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 10:00 AM Ken D'Ambrosio < ken at jots.org mailto:ken at jots.org > wrote:
> > >> Hey, all. I'm deeply, deeply sorry I missed the fun. Tow truck finally
> > >> got me to Amherst around 7:00, and I still had to walk home from the
> > >> shop. But enough about me: I'm curious how things went! Was a good
> > >> time had by all?
> > > Everyone was so devastated by your inability to attend, they all
> > > left after learning of the news.
> > >
> > >> Should we consider getting together again on a regular
> > >> (probably quarterly) basis, maybe with an actual agenda, etc.?
> > > My personal opinion (and not that of any other person, organization,
> > > or entity) has long been that regular meetings should come before
> > > formal meetings. It seems like people get caught up in the desire for
> > > topics or speakers or other formalism, and seeing an inability to
> > > sustain such, give up. My thought is that if a community is built and
> > > nourished, things like topics and speakers will follow naturally, as
> > > people discuss, discover, and want to do more. But if there is no
> > > community, the opportunity for that synthesis is greatly diminished.
> > > (Others have theorized that a lack of formal structure means there is
> > > nothing to build on. So maybe I'm wrong.)
> > >
> > > So I would suggest picking a date and recurrence interval and
> > > getting that going.
> > >
> > > Perhaps at the next meeting, the question of topics of interest
> > > could be the discussed. (See? Already the synthesis occurs.)
> > >
> > > One concern I do have is: It is often difficult to hear and be heard
> > > in a restaurant venue. It certainly was the other night. At the same
> > > time, it seems like food and drink are an appealing aspect for many.
> > > I know in the past, venues with a quiet corner or room, such that the
> > > celebration and the discussion could be colocated, or relocated to
> > > with a short walk, were sought, with some success. Perhaps that is
> > > still a possibility?
> > >
> > > -- Ben
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