Answers to your specific membership recruiting questions follow,
Ted, but first some history is needed to make them more plausible.
In the fifties, I made my first ham radio contact using old and home
constructed equipment. It was a never-matched thrill to break out of
the isolated woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and converse by Morse
Code with a ham a staggering 350 miles to the south in Wisconsin. The
thrill will not be repeated today; ham equipment is so complex that
very few engineers fully comprehend it.
In my twenties, I raced automobiles - Austin 850s to be specific. A
new cam, higher performance brake shoes, a muffler cut-out, or an
electronic ignition kit could win the day for you at Louden, Thomson,
or Orange. We all raced junks and did our own mechanical and body
work. Now it costs $100K to get on the track and your car is so
complex that nobody local will understand it. You don't dare change
anything.
Linux may now be at the point where only those who grew with it can
fully understand it. Think of all the hard lessons learned by getting
Red Hat 5.2 working on a 486 with 16MB of RAM. More particularly, I
should say - the thinking processes and strategies learned. Will the
new-comer teenager or 20-something get those valuable thinking
processes from today's automatic installers?
The people on this and similar LUGs are likely the best Linux
experts the world will ever see. And there are two reasons why the
world will make fewer and fewer of such experts.
The first reason I have covered. When one can get an overwhelmingly
complex system to do such interesting things as edit videos, save TV
programs, play fantastic games, etc., why would a young person want to
spend 15 years going through the basics to get to the understanding
level here on the LUG? They just want to use the programs to create
something on top of what has been done. Fair enough.
The second reason is that the Linux movement was a rebellion against
goodies that were beyond budgets an unresponsive commercial interests.
A perfect place for a young turk to show his independence from the
older generation and "establishment". How much rebellion is there in
joining forces with Novel, IBM, Sun, Google, etc.?
So, what to do.
First of all, the people who grew with Linux will always need a
gathering spot. gnhLUG should not abandon them; they deserve the first
priority.
There may not be another "new frontier" in software applications as
technically focused or generally appealing as the Linux development
adventure. If that is true, there will be no one place to look for new
members and no single bait to offer.
Luggies talk about getting Linux to the desktop, but that interest
ends after the operating system is installed. Unfortunately, that is
just the beginning of an unfamiliar, confusing, and costly adventure
for the non-technical user.
The corporations and educators will promote the desktop much more
effectively and the types of people that hang out at a LUG. If you
want to try it on the local level, however, teaming with the Chamber of
Commerce or local libraries to give practical training to non-technical
business people in the use of Linux desktop programs might raise some
interest.
But, that is pretty far off from what most of us do or enjoy.
Is reaching out really a good idea? Or should the LUG stay as it is
and enjoy its golden years as are the radio amateurs?
Jim Kuzdrall
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