[aclug-L] Re: ACLUG

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

My two cents on whatever's going on with ACLUG right now:

David Wiebe's meeting experience seems about par for the course.
I've been to 10-20 meetings over the 2.5 years since I've been
in Wichita (got here just as John Goerzen was splitting, so I've
had a taste of the ancien regime, which I'll return to below);
some meetings are better, but most aren't. And it's worth noting
that by far the best presentations I've seen are by people who
otherwise never show up at meetings -- perhaps because they
don't realize what the normative standards are?

The exception to the rule was, unsurprisingly, John Goerzen.
Goerzen started ACLUG, molded it in his image, and left it to
his buddies to try to carry on his legacy. Without getting
into his buddies (who certainly deserve credit for trying and
for caring), I think this (call it "Goerzen's ghost," or "the
fading Goerzen effect") has become a big problem for ACLUG.
Consider these points:

 1) The 7:00-7:30 q&a period worked much better with Goerzen,
    for three simple reasons: 1) he showed up by 7; 2) he took
    command of the meeting; and 3) he knew the answers. Drop
    the ball on any of those three points and the period
    fails.

 2) Goerzen's presentations (at least all that I saw) were
    pretty straightforward tutorials, and this set the mold
    for most subsequent presentations, except that Goerzen
    was much better at it -- probably because he was writing
    (or at least researching) his book at the time, so he
    was prepared. There are lots of problems with tutorials,
    such as finding a common level of interest and expertise,
    and the right trade-off between compressing a subject to
    fit the time while keeping it correct. (Just to pick one
    example, my own C programming presentation would have
    made more sense as a six week course/study group, and
    in any case had rather limited interest.)

    In contrast, a good example of a non-tutorial presentation
    was the one on the Linux handheld, which was basically a
    participant's report on an ongoing project, and conveyed
    much of the interest in participating in such a project.

 3) AFAIK, Goerzen continues to control the aclug.com website,
    which makes it hard for anyone else to contribute, to do
    anything else with it. Even if the meetings were smashing,
    the website could still reach many more people, on their
    own schedules, with a wider range of information, with
    more flexible access, etc.

 4) ACLUG is rooted at WSU because that's where Goerzen was,
    and I think that's a big limiting factor (unless, of
    course, WSU were to really start supporting ACLUG, like
    giving us decent meeting facilities, even when the campus
    is out-of-season).

Given this legacy, it's not very surprising that maintaining
ACLUG in this manner has become a pretty hopeless task. Which
is why I think it is important to go back to scratch and ask
basic questions about what a LUG is good for, and how to make
it work. Very briefly, my answer is that LUGs should work to
build self-help communities first (which includes businesses
as well as end-users), and second work to expand the community
through evangelism. And the meetings, the website, mail list,
etc., should be tailored to work toward those goals.

In the case of meetings, since that seems to be the crux of
the immediate crisis, this is what I think makes sense:

 1) Only have one general-audience meeting a month, which
    would feature presenting something of general interest:
    could be a "big name" guest speaker, could be a panel,
    could be 2-3 shorter speakers, whatever.

 2) Schedule these meetings well in advance. I suggest
    something like 2nd Wednesday of each month; i.e., some
    date that's unlikely to get disrupted by holidays,
    weekend travel, etc.

 3) Get a big enough room -- probably an auditorium or
    lecture hall that can sit >100 people. (It's ridiculous
    to try to grow an organization when your meeting room
    can only hold 20 people.)

 4) Have a separate break-out room, for people to continue
    discussions after the presentation(s), and possibly for
    socializing before (or during, if the presentation gets
    dull).

 5) Make sure the presentations are well prepared, and the
    presentors authoritative. (If need be, help them, or
    team up someone who knows things with someone who knows
    how to present them.)

 6) Make announcements at the start of the meeting, but try
    to handle routine business elsewhere.

Lots more stuff that could be done: Tutorials should take on
their own size and shape. Help should be done on website
first, then mail list (rather than other way around). I'd
like to see the mail lists default-reply to the senders
rather than to the list ("reply all" would still get you
back to the list). There could be SIGs or BOFs, which could
have their own meetings or forums. There should be more
interaction with other LUGs -- my guess is that much of
what we'd want to do other LUGs would want to do, and
vice versa. When I first got here I threw out a proposal
to certify "Linux-friendly businesses" -- I still think
that's a good idea. The "committee" could be more open,
and more aggressive at soliciting help. I could go on
and on; hopefully you get the idea.

PS: Patrick Klee has pulled his stunt before; ignore him.

-- 
/*
 *  Tom Hull * thull at kscable.com * http://www.tomhull.com/
 */
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