On Saturday 03 April 2010 05:45:28 [email protected] wrote: > > Also, SLUG should consider producing a magazine for members filled with > > articles from members including tutorials, reviews of open source > > software and code snippets, updates on what members are working on and > > some basics. It could become a benefit of membership. It could be > > emailed as a pdf to financial members at their slug.org.au email address. > > Interesting idea. > > I see one major problem and one major ideological issue though. > > The problem is the same one we have with talks: you can't have content > without someone taking the time to produce the content. We have enough > trouble now just trying to round up two people to give a talk every > month; I can't imagine getting written content would be any easier. > > On the other hand, a short article might be easier to produce than a > 45-minute talk - and there's no public speaking required, which no > doubt would make it easier for some people to participate. > > If we could get the content I like this idea - except for the "Emailed > as a PDF" bit. I think there are much better ways we could present > this: for instance, an area of the SLUG website only accessible by > financial members; or even a simple private mailing list. > > The ideological issue is more serious. SLUG has never (to the best of > my knowledge) been about withholding information. We run our mailing > lists in public: anyone is free to read the archives, to join the > list, to participate, without needing to be a financial member. We > don't charge attendance fees for meetings, we don't require that > people coming to meetings become members. The idea of having a private > member's magazine seems antithetical to everything SLUG has ever done. > > There are compromises of course; I believe the SAGE-AU mailing list > archives used to be members-only for 6 months and then released to the > public (although now it seems the archives are completely > members-only). We could perhaps investigate something similar. > > My gut feeling though is that, no matter how much we want to provide > value to members, having private content is not the right way to go.
My 2c from Perth, so appropriate pinch of salt ... If and when I want to read interesting stuff I purchase Linux Format (et al) so SLUG cannot compete with this content. Mostly you are the victim of your own success. Who goes to 'the automobile club' these days. A few niche affinardos, likewise us linux users. I've also noticed a few times that an interesting or socially relevant topic is declared OT. (it was OT!) IMHO clinging steadfastly to your core values will get the diehard core members only. Meandering makes everybody lose interest. You need to clearly position yourselves and get the membership that matches your position. The world has changed, the audience has changed, I'm still as enthusiastic and technical as ever BUT others arn't. Here endith the lesson James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
