On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 12:09 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote: > I think the thing to take out of this discussion is that it takes a lot of > work to build a community, and if you want to get a particular thing out of > your community, you need to contribute and work towards it.
In 2001 (I think) I wanted to learn more about Debian. With the approval
of the SLUG committee (required for insurance cover, etc) I booked a
room in a pub and sent out an email.
That's all it took.
About twenty people turned up to the Wooloomolloo Bay Hotel and the
Debian Special Interest Group (SIG) was born. It's still running in some
form today. I'm of the understanding it was and still is the only
monthly meeting of people interested in Debian and Debian Developers in
the world.
Many great ideas, projects and partnerships have spawned from those
meetings. Within a few meetings it had gone from being Debian only talk
topics to more like SLUG-Social - with the name never being changed
because no one could think of a more suitable one.
The only down side of the DebSIGs was that some people chose to never
come because the event had the word "Debian" in it, despite most talks
being non-distro specific (we even had a Gentoo talk). The many people
from Sydney and around the globe who come to DebSIG know exactly what a
vibrant, informative and embracing meeting it is.
The flaming drinks have become particularly notorious ;)
This year we're at our new, third venue. Those of you who have never
been, keep an eye out for a topic that's of interest and come along. It
will probably still be called DebSIG but as others have found out, it's
really about community and sharing knowledge.
To re-iterate Jeff's point, if there's something you want out of your
SLUG community, all it takes is to book a room somewhere and send out an
email.
--
Cheers,
Craige.
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