Dear Members, Allow me to present the points noted in a meeting between some members of the steering group of Lug_Mbarara chapter, held on 22/03/2011.
After talking to Simon on the forum(Mbarara forum), many members responded to the activities of the group which is a nice sign of getting back to the road of the group (Introducing and Maintaining a Linux User group in Mbarara), from the call for the meeting run by Phaisal, Four members (Mugonza, Phaisal, Bruce and Me) attended with one late apology from some one who was supposed to spear head the meeting. We however failed to get in touch with the secretary of the group which made it hard to make a follow up of the past group activities. >From a small agenda that consisted of 1) Opening Prayer, 2) Communications from members which included problems for stalled movements, 3) Way forward which was about forging a way out of the problems identified and setting up a working system, 4) Any other Business (AOB) and Finally a Closing prayer. The meeting started at exactly 17:34 with a prayer from Bruce and as the rule goes, Mugonza was charged with refreshments for the meeting for coming late. It was really a nice meeting were the few members that attended showed signs of commitment and zeal to move on with a small working User group. Members were quick to identify the problems by trying to refresh minds of what so far we had achieved and the different presentations made. Among other things members noted that people in Mbarara (students in particular since up to now we are only working with students) had a tendency of being excited by some thing new brought by some one new and after few trials they usually pull out---although still members noted that from this system there was hope to retain some few members who really come with commitment. Members also noted that among the causes of failure to have people migrating was presenting (Linux Presentations) in a Laboratory that was powered by Windows Xp (With enough facebooking during the presentations) save for the people who have laptops (Usually three or two and these are the people presenting). We realised that it was hard for someone to try some thing if they still had the safe heavens in Windows. On this note members decided to bring on board system administrators of the university (thank God we managed to talk to two interested system Admins as the meeting was going on) who would for the start, identify and dual boot a particular lab specific for the Lug cause. As a way of finding points of weakness and strength, members tried to figure out what had caused the success of the previous presentation to my surprise all members came to conclude that it was brought about by the massive publicity which now we missed due to the busy schedule of our publicity secretary who cannot even delegate duties. On this note members decided to have another publicity secretary (who is yet to be announced) with a less work load and also continue with a small committed group for gradual but steady growth. After realising that most of the presentations so far had in mbarara were intro presentations and installations, people who managed to follow up with them felt that they knew enough linux, (by Installation, playing some few Multimedia files then doing some word processing) sat back and relaxed. Members noted that we needed to find a way of challenging these people who were not supposed to attend any more installation and introduction sessions by having two parallel presentation for the two different groups. Members further noted that there was some sort of rigidity in terms of a presentation venue and a minimum number to start a presentation, but steps were put in place to stop this tendency. We resolved to have a presentation no matter what is going on in our default lab and no matter the number of people available although with some sort of communication in case people come to the default lab and find some thing different. As you might note the hottest point of the day was publicity we planned to have an extra time on this point in terms of presentation preparation. Some of the way forwards that were not answering questions directly, members came up with, included among others; Mugonza was supposed to find a way of bringing on lecturers(in particular lecturers in technology) but am yet to check the mailing list to find who have been added. I also remember Mugonza was tasked to add the two system Admins who had showed interest to the mailing list, but we are still wondering whether internet went off in Mugonza's office. Bruce asked us to find a planned way of spending the moneys so far on his account before we obtain more because even the DVDs which were bought had never been distributed. On this, members decided to distribute DVDs powered with Ubuntu (I dont know which one though) on the next meeting. In more resolutions, members were asked to identify serious members to take up tasks on the steering group to take the thing forward (Phaisal I hope you never forgot, as I cannot see any new name on the list). Since final year projects were cited as the major cause of absentism, members decided to only attract new members to the university who still have some time on their belts. Finally Phaisal was asked to give his prepared presentation on the 29/03/2011. People in Kampala you will note that we only use meetings to come up with a compromise in Mbarara unlike the way things are done on the main Lug ( where a number of Mails are used to decide on a given matter for example a venue and topic of presentation) because internet access to some members is still a night mare. It is still hard to even discuss a topic on the Mbarara Chapter mailing list because no one will respond to a problem (if your lucky some few people will respond after accessing internet-cafe-internet). We don't know how to work around this problem but in the meetings members acknowledged that this was a problem beyond the arms of Lug and Linux at large and accepted defeat. Simon you are specifically targeted by this mail, although little has been mentioned of your support, because of your shown desire to see Mbarara Chapter Moving and I also call on all Members of Lug_Kampala to advise this young group which is at a risk of collapsing. Lug Mbarara Chapter welcomes any sort of support from any one to see that Linux in part and component of the University daily system. Forgive me for being verbosive, but I think It was called for. Thank you very much! ................................................................................................................................................ Seat of Wisdom .............Pray for us Cause of our Joy ...........Pray for us .................................................. Kizito Thomas +256-712-929564 +256-782-062708
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