> What is the "point" of the UUG, in your (and in others') eyes? For > example, to me, it's been a bunch of people who enjoy playing around with > Unix-based systems [the fact that I'd like to include MacOS X/BSD/etc. > users in the group is I think the biggest argument against changing the > group's name, but I guess I (fortunately) missed /that/ flamefest] who > have meetings and talk about cool, nerdy unix-y stuff and occasionally we > have fun activities, be it a barbecue or an install-fest or whatever. > Historically I was never really a "core" member, but I came to a lot of > meetings when I could, and when I had a car I went to other off-campus > activities as well.
Our ideas are the same about what the UUG should be.
> That leads me to the next question: are we having a "problem" with any of
> these goals? Are not very many people coming to meetings?
There are usually ~20 +/- 5 people per meeting. Considering there are hundreds
of people on the list this is pretty low. If no one shows up, it's not the
end of the world. I just don't want to spend a lot of time planning stuff
that not a lot of people are interested in.
> Are not very
> many people coming to the "fun" activities? Are not many people wanting to
> help out with an install-fest booth?
Almost no one has signed up for the booth.
> I've only been back a couple of
> weeks, but it seems the only serious problem is with the last one, and
> that seems to be because everybody is busy with school/work (that's my
> only excuse, and I'm contemplating skipping school/work to help out for an
> hour if things get serious enough).
I'm in the same boat as everyone else so I know how busy people can get. Usually
by now we have 2-3 times as many people signed up for the booth as we do right
now. This is the least response we've gotten since we've had a booth.
> Finally, /is/ it a "bad" thing if we have 50 people show up to the
> install-fest and only 4 UUG members there to help out? And, seriously,
> judging from the past (I can't remember if I ever actually went to an
> install-fest, so I don't know) is this a real danger? It seems to me we'd
> be in more danger of a dozen UUG member showing up and there being little
> for them to do.
>
> After all, most installs are two minutes of configuration, a half hour of
> waiting, and a few more minutes of trouble-shooting. We don't need an army
> of enthusiastic penguin-suit-wearers to coerce the masses into joining the
> Open Source Cult, if you get my meaning. I feel that if we have two or
> three UUG members interested in helping, and a dozen or two people
> interested in getting Linux installed on their computers, then that's not
> a terrible thing. At worst it means there's not very much interest at the
> moment, and at best it means everybody's currently busy with other things.
I don't think you've ever been to an installfest. If you've ever done an
installfest you know that if you are helping more than 3 or 4 people at
a time things are total chaos. I remember Byron, the smartest person I
know, going crazy trying to help 4-5 people. People have strange
hardware, installations crash, they have questions, etc. If we had 10-15
people at a normal sized installfest things would go well.
> I guess what I'm trying to say is:
>
> 1, there may be a lot of interest in the booth/installfest, but everyone's
> too busy, and
>
> 2, even if it _is_ the case that there's not a lot of interest in the
> booth, I don't see that correlating with "the future of club
> meetings/activities" (unless you've been seeing a definite decline which I
> have totally missed out on since I haven't been around).
Should I waste my time planning another installfest if no one wants to
do it? I've already spent several hours getting things ready and
reserving rooms, etc. If we cancel this one because people are too busy,
that's fine with me. I just want to know what I should do.
> And finally,
>
> 3, even if there is minimal interest in/people with time available for the
> installfest, I see no reason we can't do a scaled-down version with only a
> few people.
In the past we've just got up there and handed out fliers. We don't know how
many people will come; sometimes a lot come, other times just a few. We just
try to have as many people come as possible to help out.
Here is the overall purpose of my questions:
I want to plan activities that people in the club want. In the past people
have liked doing installfests and the booth. If people are not interested
any more, we'll stop doing it. I also want to make sure the club doesn't
die off when people start leaving; I'm just hoping to get more core members.
-Evan
--
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Evan McNabb: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://evan.mcnabbs.org
System Administrator, CS Department, BYU
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