Wow, this discussion eggsploded. I was going to respond to a whole bunch of the posts but I decided to start with one post. It's not a very refined post as it's basically the core dump that I would have used to create all my responses. Probably less work for everyone to just see the coredump: ///////////begin core There are different purposes the group can have. I'm not sure how many are interested in these two but they could be a core of a group. Purpose A: Help the general public discover and use linux to solve their problems Purpose B: Help each other advance knowledge. It's the undiscovered people that matter the most. Not just members. Don't think the group is "owned" by and is to serve members. If you think it's to serve the general public and it's members, it will work better. If it's function is nostalgia for current members then it won't survive or make a difference in the world. Without "Purpose A" above, a group can't sustain. Meetings can have rotating venues. Downtown is better as it's better for access by the most people but rotating venues can support a wider area. A single-venue, consensus-based group is so 90's (check calanedar). Every person doesn't have to go to every meeting. I'm not convinced a board or formal management is a benefit. We just need someopen communication methods so people in the group can organize whatever they want. Everybody doesn't have to agree to everything. For instance a bunch of people should be able to orgnaize a meetup or presentation and all those that disagree simply don't make it out. They don't have to block it. Organic is okay. You can't engineer a community. There needs to be an online component. But this isn't a replacement for face to face activities. (The group and members could have blogs and other sharing systems such as youtube and other means of sharing meeting content). Listservs and Google Groups are cool. ///////////end core -- Darcy Whyte *Inventor, Artist, darcy [ at ] siteware [ dot ] com* rubber-power.com <http://www.rubber-power.com> Squirrel Rubber Band Plane mambohead.com <http://www.mambohead.com/> Art+ incandescent.ca Energy generalSocial.com <http://www.generalsocial.com/> Social Network Theory siteware.com <http://www.siteware.com/>: Software Service Since '88 endlessLift.com <http://www.endlesslift.com/> Aviation Art | Canada | N 45° 25'03.1" W 75° 42'21.4" | 613-563-3634 (by appointment) Please don't send messages with a blank subject. Reply using same subject unless it's a different topic. On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Richard Guy Briggs <rgb [ at ] tricolour [ dot ] net>wrote: > On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 01:25:21PM -0400, Brett Delmage wrote: > > On Thu, 22 Mar 2012, Richard Guy Briggs wrote: > > > > >On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 08:46:55AM -0400, Grégoire, André wrote: > > >>It would cool if we could have a poll to see where members preferred > > >>to have the meetings that way the majority would take it. > > > > > >This assumes that the potential body of interested people aren't already > > >ignoring us because of accessibility. > > > > > >It would certainly be more objective than the current set of anekdotes. > > > > It *could* be more objective if conducted properly and transparently > > for all OCLUG members. Otherwise it might just be a disguised > > representation of someone's opinion. > > I would normally assume this goes without saying, but Brett is > absolutely correct, since we have seen too many cases where this is not > the case. > > slainte mhath, RGB > > -- > Richard Guy Briggs -- ~\ -- ~\ < > hpv.tricolour.net> > <www.TriColour.net> -- \___ o \@ @ Ride yer > bike! > Ottawa, ON, CANADA -- Lo_>__M__\\/\%__\\/\% > Vote! -- <greenparty.ca > >_____GTVS6#790__(*)__(*)________(*)(*)_________________ > _______________________________________________ > Linux mailing list > Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca > http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux >