On 1/20/06, Andrew McNabb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > However, this does not mean that we should be a desktop club. We have > traditionally been "the geekiest club on campus," and that's what's kept > us going. I will heartily oppose any effort to turn us into a Desktop > Linux Club. When desktop-related stuff comes up on the list, that's > great, but I don't think we should have desktop-oriented meetings. I > think they're boring, and that's there's really not much to learn from > them.
There is general trend, I think, which you seemed to have presented evidence for in one of your earlier posts, Andrew. The consequence of Linux use broadening to more types of people means that the average user becomes less geeky and elite. What is happening to Linux now is the same thing that happened to the Internet back in the mid 1990s. As more less advanced users start to use the technology the less technical in general that use becomes. It's an interesting place for a user group to be in and I think all LUGs are either facing the same issues or will face them within the next few years. It can also be exciting time for a user group. I remember thinking a couple of years ago when I was investigating what happened to the old disbanded UVSC LUG and again when we had preliminary meetings for the new UVLUG what a tremendous opportunity a college LUG has to bring the good news to the masses and that can come via the SSS and especially installfests. Both Erin and Jordy when he was president were intent on having newbie meetings. That may or may not be the way to go, but as I was reminded by a slashdot post recently, you can't set apart geekiness anymore just by usership of the technology. http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174344&cid=14504922 > This is _exactly_ what I'm saying. There are so many specific > communities out there for desktop-related issues. There is so much help > out there for distro-specific problems. The UUG has nothing to add. > The specialized communities will always do a better job at what they do. Another consequence of increased usage of OSS is manifested by the recent interest in creating (fragmenting?) so many new speciality OSS user groups locally. In that case what becomes of the UUG/UVLUG/PLUG when there are local ruby/php/perl/java/asterisk/ubuntu/gentoo user groups not just to answer questions on mailing lists but also presenting user group specific topics at their own meetings? Does this mean the days of general purpose FLOSS user groups are over? Or nearly so? I guess ultimately it is decided by what people really want. Justin -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
