[aclug-L] Re: ACLUG

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Another round on this, interposed but uncut. In any case, this is just
food for thought.

Dale W Hodge wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: discussion-bounce@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:discussion-bounce@xxxxxxxxx]On
> > Behalf Of Tom Hull
> >
> > 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?
> 
> That could be... :-) More likely it's because they were very familiar with the
> topic. It's unfortunate, but as often as not we have presentations on subjects
> that the speaker is only a little more versed than the audience. But if we 
> only
> go with what we know well, we're going to tire of the same three
> presentations... :-)

The crack about "normative standards" was just that, but this is my
point: if the presenter doesn't know the subject, he's not a presenter;
at best he's a facilitator in a study group.

Presentations work when the presenter knows what he's talking about,
and everyone else is there to learn. Study groups are something else.
Study groups may be a good thing to do, but they demand a level of
commitment from everyone above and beyond what presentations entail.

> > 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.
> 
> I agree. But Goerzen was a student and was on campus. He didn't have to get 
> off
> work at 6 and find time to get home, eat and drive across town to a meeting.  
> He
> was also a Linux uber-guru. I don't think we've found one yet to replace him.
> :-)

Better to adjust the format so you don't need to find another Goerzen,
than just hang onto a format that isn't working.

> >  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.
> 
> A good example of a good meeting, as was the Star Office presentation.  But
> there are only so many non-tutorials that I can think of doing.

The Star Office presentation was a combination of general overview and
personal experience show-and-tell, which made it interesting in a very
general way without getting tied up in details.

I don't think the issue here is the subject so much as how you go about
presenting it. Take Samba for example: one can do a tutorial and go into
hacking config files, or one can do an overview and cover what sort of
things Samba can do, and talk about your experiences with it, security,
performance, etc. You might seek out 3-4 members who've done this to get
a range of opinion/experience, as well as spread out the workload. It's
probably much easier to recruit someone to participate in a panel than
to give a solo presentation (especially a good one).

> >  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.
> 
> While Goerzen does manage Aclug.org, the committee does have some control over
> it. We have talked about returning it to Wichita, but so far, there benefits
> haven't outweighed the drawbacks.  At best, it's always been a draw. Maybe 
> it's
> time to re-think this again.
> 
> >  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).
> 
> That's not exactly the case.  We've stayed at WSU because it was felt that a
> large portion of our members were students at WSU. That may no longer be the
> case. If not, then we need to think seriously about alternative meeting
> locations.

Maybe you do both: have a WSU-based student group as a SIG, and ACLUG
as a broader community group. I'm just asking for an open mind on this.

> > 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.
> 
> I would favor 1 topic meeting and 1 "social" meeting.

I don't know what you mean by a "social" meeting. There could be
different types of meetings/events, especially if one need not get
involved in all of them.

> >  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.
> 
> That would be much easier to schedule.
> 
> >  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.)
> 
> The problem has been one of cost. Some of the places we've looked into cost
> quite a bit, so there would have to be some way to raise funds to pay for 
> them.

I'd like to stay cheap. And >100 is just a number I invented, but you
certainly need more room than 20.

> >  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).
> 
> Given the way some of the presentations have gone, maybe we need big room for
> the break-out. ;-)  All kidding aside, that's not a bad idea.
> 
> >  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.)
> 
> That's obvious, but have you tried finding those people?  The real 
> knowledgeable
> people don't seem to see the benefit of showing up and giving a presentation.

And why is that? Sounds like an egg-and-chicken problem.

Also, panels are a way to spread out the work and shore up the expertise.

> >  6) Make announcements at the start of the meeting, but try
> >     to handle routine business elsewhere.
> 
> Part of talking about regular business at the meeting is to allow other
> viewpoints to be heard.  We try not to do too much without the member's input.

Yeah, but most of the members aren't at the meeting, and/or aren't
informed or prepared, plus you're cutting into presentation time.
Why not do the admin/committee work on a new mail list, supplemented
by occasional IRC meetings?

Meetings topics are a common "regular business" issue. You take the
approach that you're supply-limited, so anyone who wants to give a
presentation bad enough is likely to get a shot; but another approach
would be to make it demand-driven: find out what people want to find
out about, then try to find someone (or a panel) to do it.

> > 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'm not sure I see how that would work. Care to elaborate?

Set up a FAQ, maybe using one of the FAQ-building tools and/or a
wiki. Try to find people to "own" pieces of the FAQ. Try to train
people to look things up in the FAQ first, then ask questions if
they don't find what they want. Capture the questions and answers
in the FAQ.

The key point is that you're incrementally adding knowledge to the
website. Tutorials should go there too. Presentations. Make it some
sort of portal: the first place to look for Linux info in Kansas.

> > 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).
> 
> No, I don't see that at all.  The whole point of the lists is to promote 
> sharing
> of ideas. People sometimes learn answers to questions they have yet to think 
> of
> by just reading the lists.

Maybe different mailers handle this differently, but if I want to
reply to a post privately (which I sometimes do), setting reply-to
to the list means I have to retype the sender's address. Doing it
the other way around means all I have to do is choose between my
"Reply" and "Reply All" buttons (then delete the sender, but that's
easier than typing the sender in).

If you don't do this, as the list grows we all get swamped with
useless replies, and/or people don't bother to respond for fear
of burdening the list (which you receive back, and gets logged)
where an easy private reply would be done. Trying to force all
replies back to the list is wasteful and/or a nuissance. Almost
all of the mail lists that I subscribe to work that way. This
leaves it up to the individual to decide whether any give post
is of interest to the list, which is the way it should be.

> >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.
> 
> We've have limited contact with other UG's, but that's not out of the 
> question.
> 
> >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.
> 
> How much more agressive do you want?  We asked, begged, pleaded, cajoled and 
> we
> still have trouble getting help.

There are evidently some disconnects in perception here;
I know I can recall instances for every one of your verbs,
yet somehow I've never felt particularly welcome -- that
there is something in my personality as well as yours [not
the personal you] that has yet to mesh. Maybe you are "a
fairly social group," and I'm just not social enough to
recognize that, but maybe I'm not the only one with that
problem. I'm afraid that the "committee" has always felt
like a clique to me.

> --dwh

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