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unclug - Re: [unclug] growing the LUG

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Subject: UNC Linux Users Group

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  • From: "Todd M. Lewis" <utoddl AT email.unc.edu>
  • To: UNC Linux Users Group <unclug AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [unclug] growing the LUG
  • Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 07:51:24 -0400



Cristobal Palmer wrote:
Rather than read too much into the lack of responses, I'm going to
assume that I wrote (0) too long an email and (1) sent it at a bad
time in the semester.

I think there may be a couple of other factors. One is that, with the growing capabilities of web hosted communities, there isn't as much need for face to face contact among people with a common interest. Not that face time isn't important or useful, but most everybody is already plugged into one or more groups through the internet -- usually much larger groups that you could hope to create locally.

The second factor is that Linux is becoming too ubiquitous to compel people to take the time to meet physically/locally somewhere. That's a good thing for Linux, but bad if you like LUGs. It would be like trying to start a Light Switch Users Group. Geek One: "They are soooo cool, wouldn't it be great if we could get together and extol the virtues of light switches to each other?" Geek Two: "Well, er, no, thanks. But if I run into a technical problem with a light switch, I'll keep your contact info handy." I exaggerate, but you get the idea.

I've got a stack of 4 PCs on my desk, each with a different Linux distribution installed. They pretty much all just work. A new distribution comes out, and if it's interesting enough to me, one of my machines gets rebuilt. Maybe. They've gotten pretty good. I read http://slashdot.org/ and http://lwn.net/ every day. I'm on the mailing lists of the software projects I'm interested in. I get the invitations monthly to the North Carolina System Administrators meetings, though I hardly ever go. (See <http://www.ncsysadmin.org/> if you're interested.) I've subscribed to this list in case some local user asks about something I'm familiar with and I can help him/her out, but that _rarely_ happens any more. I'm already maxed out for meetings, schedule-wise. What exactly do a local LUG and I have to offer each other that makes it worth the effort either for the LUG or for me (beyond this list, which is admittedly low volume enough to hardly count)? I have nothing against the LUG idea or the people who want to meet other people. (Some people need that; I usually find it draining. Go figure.)

Besides, in a LUG meeting, I'd never ramble on this long. :-)

Cheers,
--
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
/ Todd_Lewis AT unc.edu 919-445-9302 http://www.unc.edu/~utoddl /
/ "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the /
/ vices I admire." - Winston Churchill /
+--------------------------------------------------------------+




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