Greetings Folks, The whole question of the meeting format it to some extent tied up with what the CLUG is for. What are we trying to be?
1) A cell of missionary zealots? 2) A self help group? 3) A social club for geeks? Probably all three at once plus others that I havn't thought of. Anyway, I think our meetings could and should reflect the differing needs of the members. If we are going to have a meeting to give a positive message to putative new members "Ra ra, isn't this Linux stuff just absolutely wonderful?", i.e. a session for group one, then it's absolutely essential that the speech is effectively animated with very quick demonstrations of many useful and visually exciting programs, so that people leave the meeting with the idea "Mm, this Linux stuff looks good, must look into it". Speakers should remember that the format of the predominant mass communications medium means that most folk in the general population come pre-programmed to have an attention span of about seven minutes. Unfortunately, what might be an appropriate format for a University lecture is quite possibly a droning bore for many members of the general public. I would particularly appreciate an evening or two for group two people. Personally I'd really appreciate a bit of help understanding how to set up my X-11 Windowing System in frame buffer mode with a Matrox G200 card. It works some of the time, non-commercial Tux Racer goes beautifully, but other programs complain with error messages. I'd also like to get the wheel on the mouse to scroll the windows, It's suppose to do that isnt it? I see this as people bringing their machines along to a totally unstructured clinic type evening. Slugs of caffein liberally available please? Small sideshows of all kinds very welcome too. I really enjoyed the evening out at the Pegasus Arms. Let's have more of those kind of outings from time to time. Cheers, -- Sincerely etc., Christopher Sawtell
