On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Stuart Jansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 16:28 -0600, David Hilton wrote: > > Do you think that having any sort of income changes who we are? I > > fail to see how this changes the UUG into a 'boring corporate puppet.' > > It is possible to become an organization that focuses on solicitation. > > From everything I have seen, this is not an issue. > > Yes. In the greater scheme of things, one ugly flash ad with poor > targeting isn't the end of the world. However, the UUG has a long and > proud tradition of being independent. Even when we were under BYUSA's > thumb we mostly did things our way because *nix geeks aren't like normal > people. The ad was a betrayal of that tradition. > > We shouldn't have to bribe people to show up with pizza, t-shirts or > putty. We should focus on cool presentation. We should prefer those > presentation be from UUG members because then we want to encourage > learning, we want to rejoice in their hard won knowledge, and we want to > turn to them on the list when we need help. > > If you want a club with strong corporate ties to help you land a safe > job at a giant company, there's already one ACM. If you want a bunch of > free pizza or free boxed crack (now with even more .Net!) there's > already one ACM. We don't need another. > > The ACM serves a demand and does it well. I am not and never was a part > of the market. For me, the UUG was an island of hope before Linux was > the success it is today. > > The UUG should focus on its strengths, not lust after some other club's > members. The UUG may not being the biggest club on campus, there may be > things we could do better, but we must be careful about how we measure > success and what we do to achieve it. > > A flash ad for Windows jobs is the perfect trifecta of betrayal. It's > trying to imitate others to achieve a shallow form of success. It's a > proprietary technology. And it's not even Unix! > > In other words, it wasn't so much the ad as what it symbolized and where > it can lead. One does not silently sit back and let a tiny evil snowball > into an overwhelming evil, one exposes it for what it is while it is > young. > I strongly disagree with your characterization of the ACM, specifically its goals and niche. Admittedly, the current ads are poorly targeted to the UUG. I suspect that they don't even have any unix-related jobs in their database yet. The ads probably wouldn't interest more than 1/3 of the ACMers, either. I have no idea how long it might take for them to get better ads up, but I suspect that Peter could speed the process by letting them know about this discussion. The same goes for the flashiness. As far as a focus on presentations, I'm all for it. But this is not mutually exclusive with having an income/sponsorship. I know of several user groups that are sponsored by corporations. Mostly, it might mean that everybody gets a free meal during the presentations. It does not mean that the corporations run presentations or the group in any way. Sadly, the best cases of this are where many members of the user group work at the corporation, so it can be construed as continuing education. Being sponsored != being a corporate puppet Thanks, David
-------------------- 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/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
