I know we're all swamped with school and have a lot of stuff going on. I also think that lots of the old-timers are starting to get tired. I'm still interested in doing the installfest but I'm not sure if the overall UUG membership still is. Should we keep on having the booths and installfests?
Actually I have my doubts about the booth. Of course, I one of those who's never manned a booth, but I tend to think we could do better by finding professors teaching courses involving Linux and asking them if we can make a formal announcement in their class. There are several courses in both engineering and science that involve Linux in some way. I also know of several people in my major who could help out at an installfest, but aren't interested in joining the club (for whatever reason).
I'm also concerned about the future of the club's activities. The mailing list has gone on for years and I think it will be for a long time. When we move on we can still stay involved; Matt, the founder of the club, is still on the mailing list. However, the people who have been attending meetings and activities are the older members that are starting to move on. Many of our most active members have just left or will be gone soon: Dave Smith, Art, Hans, Brailsford, Halcrow, Torrie and others. Heck, Stuart might even graduate soon!
I'll still be here man, don't worry. I've got two academic years left. Stuart, however, should be given an honorary degree and sent on his way. ;-)
The point of this message is: 1) To see if there is enough interest for this semester's booth/installfest 2) To see if we should continue having booths/installfests 3) To think of how we can get younger members to get more involved in coming to meetings/activities
I hope this message does not sound pessimistic. I just want to make sure we have enough support from ALL of our members to have these events.
A lot of people who've been through one or two installs themselves could help in at least the normal cases and the gurus could be ready to help when things get bad. If they knew that they didn't have to be gurus maybe they'd be willing to help.
I have to agree there needs to be more participation at the meetings. I'm guilty myself there. I felt bad that so few people were at the CVS meeting. It was really great and I'm glad I didn't miss it. Speaking of which we need to get Byron's notes posted (and I need to write the CVS on Windows article I've been meaning to write.)
I came to my first meeting because Jake gave me a flier for a meeting on a topic I was really interested in (PHP sessions). I'd love to hand out fliers in my classes and at work for meetings, not just for installfests.
Ideology follows...
I sometimes wonder how other people see this club. I tend to think of it as an opportunity to "share the software." As some of you might have suspected I'm a big advocate of Open Source software (sorry FSF, I'm on ESRs side here) on _any_ platform, not just the UNIX-like.
Of course that will all change for my family rather quickly when I no longer have a source of free (as in beer) licenses to proprietary software (MSDNAA). And MS will never touch any of my servers, ever.
Frankly, since I'm not serious about programming (though I do from time to time, and I'm not too bad) I'll never contribute directly to the community which has given me so much. I'm a freeloader, I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. Because of that I want to serve the community in other ways, like helping out on the list, or at an installfest. I also like to push for OSS where I work from time to time. (Jake, The GIMP is now on remote, as is OpenOffice.org, but you have to look for it and I've heard rumors that it doesn't work properly under Terminal Services.)
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I wan't to serve because OSS has made me Free. For me it's the right solution to piracy. Hmm, that sounds like I could be a legalize-marijuana advocate by the same token. I'm not. Drat, now I'm rambling again.
Some kind of anti-piracy campaign would seem appropriate to me. Why feel guilty using Word, when you can feel Free using OpenOffice?
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