On Monday 08 December 2003 21:39, Tony Dyer wrote: > How about we leave it at the last Thursday of the month. This LUG caters > for more than students! The bah humbug factor in me says "Sod Xmas. We'll have it on the last Thursday as per usual". However sense (for once) prevails and it would be a poorly attended meeting I suspect. Thats if there was anywhere open to have it.
So I say bring it forward a week to the 18th -- or don't bother with a December meeting cos the pub will be full of office parties. Or organise our own Xmas party elsewhere... Previous mails have expressed a little dissatisfaction with the monthly pissup meeting in the Counting House. I think perhaps it is time to stand back and ask ourselves what do we really want out of this LUG? What is its purpose and and how can we best deliver that? We have 230 subscribed addresses on the mailing list. At a rough guess thats 170ish real people. Maybe 20-30 are regular on IRCand Counting House meetings are getting about a similar number, 20-30 folks. Thats not the same 20-30 folks but there is of course a considerable overlap. So there are 100+ mailing list members that we do not see at meetings or hear from on IRC. There is something we aren't doing right there...... OK not everyone is near Glasgow and like it or not, whether we call ourselves the Scottish LUG we are effectively the Glasgow LUG. Although by all accounts a successful LAN party was held through in the mysterious east at the weekend. So much of what we do now happens through the IRC channel that the monthly meeting may be tending to the superflous for the IRC folks. The non IRC regulars will probably feel differently about this (and rightly so) Inadvertently I think the IRCers may have formed a bit of a clique (possibly Im being a bit too strong here) but its a natural development when one section of the membership uses a more instant form of communication and possibly have more time to be able to chat. (who said bloody students and sysadmins?) Lets face it, we are a diverse bunch with diverse skill and knowledge levels, different ideas of what we need and want out of the LUG and diverse ways of communicating with each other. We dont have a formal structure ,though I can see the the reasons why others may wish to get some more formal structure in place. All of this basically boils down to "Who do we trust to handle the money?" and "Who is daft enough to put themselves up as leader?" Being deeply cynical and lazy, I'll go with the informal structure for the time being. None of the above should be taken as criticism by anyone, its certainly not meant as such, its just my particular view of how things have developed. One suggestion -- if anything (pissup, LAN party whatever) gets organised via IRC then please include an email invite via this board to our non IRC folk. OK two suggestions -- non IRC folk, please consider joining in if at all possible. I suppose a mini HOWTO is called for here but for now.... 1) get a client - mIRC is good for starters if you are just beginning cos it is a Win prog and effectively free for 30 days - I won't presume to suggest a Linux client but I'd be surprised if there isnt one installed by default with your distro. 2) point it at eu.freenode.net -- yes there _are_ alternatives, this will get you started. 3) join #scotlug 4) Have a lot of fun -- and dont be scared to jump in with the boots on and ask for help, advice whatever. -- Best Regards Willie Fleming _______________________________________________ Scottish mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/scottish
