On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Errol Casey wrote: > Can Trilug members provide any insight; I could share to these folks?
It's worth pointing out that most of the people who were very involved with starting TriLUG are not much involved with TriLUG anymore. *However*, I think that the people that are in TriLUG now are probably better qualified to say what sorts of things work/don't work when growing a LUG as TriLUG has grown into one of the larger more professionally run LUGs in the country. TriLUG membership and meeting attendance figures a incredibly disproportionate to the size of the local population which it serves. > I know a lot of the original founders of Trilug have moved on ... but > there are a lot of folks that were here when it all started, and remember > things, and have did it with other LUGs, etc. I wasn't here in the very beginning but Dreyfus certainly had plenty of available seating when I started coming. I think that TriLUG really started to explode when the members went out of their way to offer a little something for everybody. Meeting topics started including both hardcore geek tech and the whimsical. One month might be a talk on kernel hacking, and the next on how to make better use of the Linux distro running on your TiVo. Installfests have grown increasingly popular, and there seems to be continuing interest in the classes as well. The volunteer spirit is very much alive in TriLUG and I think it is important to not underestimate the importance of that. Giving volunteers a sense of ownership in the LUG will inspire them to go the extra mile to make things just that much better. In TriLUG this is evident with the member services provided with the hosted machines, with the classes, installfests and more. I think many take it for granted that all the TriLUG meetings will have wireless Internet connectivity but you know what, that is set up by a volunteer too. Being set up as a non profit entity makes it easy to accept cash donations, corporate sponsorship, etc. It's a little bit of a pain to do this up front, and will cost the founders a little bit of money up front, but over the long haul it makes it easier for local businesses and other benefactors to do things to help your LUG out. -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
