On Monday 16 October 2006 11:45 pm, Jim Grisanzio wrote: > Not sure. Just brainstorming. Maybe some panels (but I know you've done > that, too). Tutorials. Hacking sessions. Something. Guest speakers. > Field trips. :) Etc ...
Yes, these are all good things. Anything that we can share/participate in remotely is all good. How we can get there and have it implemented I'm not totally clear on, but I think it helps to talk about it. > No, you're right. I think the leadership of each user group should be > distributed widely should it doesn't always fall to one person. That, of > course, if difficult, too. The problem is when it's hard to line folks up, and it puts stress on the few folks that are actively taking care of a user group. I have been in the situation where the user group is figuring out who will speak and finally whoever is running it says, "ok I'll give a presentation on blah-blah". Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. As I've said, user groups are about socializing also, that's a big part of it for folks. Being able to talk with and bounce ideas off others of similar interest, in this case OpenSolaris, is key. > With all your experience in ug's ... are we doing all what we need to do > (given our lack of resources)? Was Microsoft any different? IBM? Both microsoft and IBM were very different, and my user groups with IBM were spur'd from microsoft. Picture this... In 1987 I moved back to the U.S., after 5 years in Japan. Never had a job in high tech, other than consulting while I was in Japan, where I self schooled myself on the PC. Found a job in the banking industry, at Security Pacific, one of the leading banks at the time (merged with BofA since). My ms rep was always willing to get most any software to our group, we programed and setup the PCs for the executives (EIS if you know what that is). One day I brainstormed over breakfast with the ms rep to start a user group based around ms languages, which were strong on the PC, and were already displacing Borland at that time. ms was hungry for customers. Despite this relationship with ms, IBM had a much stronger relationship with the bank and much stuff was being done on it. This is before the ms/IBM divorce. The group was formed, and ms provided me with 350 names which I hand typed into a mailing list program, one that printed out mailing labels. This was the base for the group. Our first meeting at one of the hotels by LAX was packed, I mean more than 300 attendees. The group met at HP by LAX for about a year and a half. I was getting IBM folks to talk on OS/2, ms was supplying windows speakers (occasionally). ms was unwilling to help the user group with software and wanted them to buy it all. As the ms/IBM divorce took place, we both parted our ways, and I continued on running one group with IBM in Downtown L.A., and later in Santa Monica (building was condemed in the Northridge earthquake which was the end of the group). The IBM group was tough to hold together and get enough speakers, but it went on for about 2 years or so, can't remember. OpenSolaris is much more helpful in getting groups started, but the key is in holding them all together. I don't think it's possible for so many user groups to stay together over the long haul, and they will not continue to grow as they do today. Most user groups have fallen apart over the years, the only LISA group is BayLISA for the most part. The Houston PC user group, once the largest PC user group in existence is probably not even going today. The internet has changed the playing field. We need to tap into the technology at our fingertips and try to help folks out globally, if we could do that we could go a long way to getting information out, educating people, and growing things to scale, on a global basis. I don't believe this model will continue to work, it just doesn't scale and is too hard to get speakers for all groups. What will happen (my speculation) is most likely the groups that are close to Sun facilities will survive, or where concentration of users are that are active and will speak. With that said, even if Sun headquarters was in Silicon Valley, this group would possibly be one of the ones that survives, only because there is more concentration of users that will actively attend here than most other places. The same was/is true of BayLISA, and SVLUG. > Is live streaming even necessary? Why not do what Scoble did with > Microsoft with Channel 9 and just do quick/dirty video tapings and post > the files. I know Ben did a few and some others have, as well. I am getting ready to do this, and was testing out my MacBook Pro recentely. I also have written up about this and it's been passed on to others in Sun, and I saw that Schwartz was doing somthing as of recent, in this fashion. Yes, streaming media is very important, IMO. The reason is that it is the state of art for inet at this time, and OpenSolaris is lacking in this area, BIG time. > How many lines? Do you fill them? And we access via skype? I'm not sure how to access, but skype is voice, I want something like a Real Server with 50 or 100 lines. If it caught on, maybe having 200-500 lines would be needed, I don't know. If we had 10 lines, we would at least have something to start with.;-) > Naaa ... we're having a perfectly lovely fall, though we're all quite > "well done" from summer, though. :) It was an especially hot summer, > even by Japanese standards I hear. We had one of the worst heat spells in NorCal ever as well. Last year it rained continually. I can deal with the weather if needed. > Ok. I'll see what I can do for spring. The largest group here is the > NSUG (Nihon Sun User Group), and their symposium can put a lot of people > in a room. I'll talk to some of the guys at the next install fest in a > few weeks, too. There are some developer groups that meet as well, but > as of yet, no separate OpenSolaris user group. Maybe we can parlay with China and/or somewhere else, China has been trying to get me there also. Let's try to work it out. Sorry for the long message, hopefully it's of some use for you and others. -- Alan DuBoff - Sun Microsystems Solaris x86 Engineering - IHV/OEM Group _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
