GLLUG Needs You!

GLLUG, the Greater London Linux User Group, had a user meeting yesterday. It had about twenty people turn up. While this may not seem too bad this is a group that has peaked at 120 people at a single meeting and had a thriving mailing list.

After the three main talks the GLLUG admin team, and a few bystanders (including me), had a chat about what we can do in the future to try and reverse the trend of diminishing numbers. While the topic of the groups use as Linux becomes easier, mainstream and better supported will have to wait for another post in the short term we decided to go for:

People owning a certain task for a specified meeting date, this way everyone knows ho should be doing what. If the person can’t o it then the responsibility can be reassigned. This also means that the the entire team doesn’t have to get involved in every meet.

Sponsorship to help cover the costs of speakers travel. GLLUG doesn’t charge an entrance fee so it has no money of its own. Certain speakers, who don’t mind giving up a Saturday of their own time, are rightly dubious about paying their own travel expenses to come into London for the day, the fees should be pretty small per meeting so if we can cover these the realm of potential speakers available to us opens up.

Less passive and more active meetings. GLLUG has a number of talks in one room and a lab available to help people who have specific questions by running through the tasks with them. One of the desirables that came out from the meeting is that people would like to see workshops / hand on tutorials in addition to the talks. If these happen on the same day or different ones is still open to discussion.

Oh yeah, I’m in charge of the March meeting so if you are a London based Linux person I’d appreciate your attendance. Details of the speakers and a confirmed date will be available by the end of February. Honest!