I think the issue here is that we’re looking at several distinct categories of people who might be interested in a LUG, and it’s hard to be relevant to all of them.
In particular, I think there’s a difference between those who use Linux professionally as a major part of their day job, and those who use it at home on their own computers or in a side business. Those using it professionally are interested in servers, cloud deployments, containers and the like, but that’s typically not relevant to those using it primarily on their own computers. Those people are interested in GUIs, gaming, office suites and the like. For the professional people, I’m not sure that a LUG is the best option. These days, Linux is so much a part of the corporate landscape that in many cases people just take it for granted. I read that, even in Microsoft’s Azure cloud hosting service, over 1/3 of the servers are running Linux, and for other providers the proportion is probably much higher. I think that people managing fleets of Linux servers are probably more interested in groups for specific technologies, such as Docker or Hadoop, than they are for Linux itself. Looking through the Tech category for Calgary <https://www.meetup.com/find/tech/> on Meetup.com shows a lot of technology-specific groups, although nothing specifically for Linux. Linux doesn’t seem to be a ‘technology’ any more, it’s just a part of the tech landscape. These professional people, however, most likely don’t run Linux on their computers at home, or on their corporate-issue laptops. (These days, they’re most likely to be running Mac, I hear.) They see Linux as simply a means to an end in the datacentre. There’s a third, and growing, category I believe: the maker community. These are people experimenting with embedded devices like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, and developing the next generation of personal and industrial tech in their garage, just as was done for the first personal/gaming computers. I’m amazed by how quickly this community has embraced Linux as a part of what they do, but I think it’s mainly because Linux is such an enabler for these commoditized embedded processors. However, I get the impression that only a small proportion of these people are also using Linux on their personal computers. Personally, I span all three categories. I’m a freelance software developer by day, writing exclusively for Linux, and deploying my work on multiple servers in the cloud that I then administer. However, I also run Linux on all my personal computers, both desktops and laptops. In addition, I own two Raspberry Pis, and I run OpenWRT on my router. So I would find almost any Linux-related talk interesting, and I could give talks on quite a range of subjects. However, I’m not sure how many other people are in multiple categories. If so, should we be focusing on just one or two categories? Let’s call the ones I’ve identified ‘enterprise’, ‘personal’ and ‘maker’. Do we have takers for all three? Are there any other categories we should be considering?
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