UKUUG 2005 Annual General Meeting

A busy Thursday night began with the UKUUG AGM. With just over twenty people present Ray Miller, council chairman, went through the details for the last year. While the full information will be available in the minutes (which should be in the next UKUUG news letter) there are a couple of points that I feel warrant a mention.

Firstly was some great news. Alasdair Kergon, who pretty much singlehandedly organises the Linux conference each year, was made an honourary UKUUG member. I think it’s a life time thing but I’m not sure. What I am sure of it that it’s well deserved and couldn’t happen to a nicer man. Alasdair has always been friendly, approachable and willing to give advice and feedback on a number of user groups and events for a lot of people. He’s served the maximum sentence on the council so he gets some time off but I’m hoping we’ll still be seeing him at all the events.

Secondly is the membership turnover. UKUUG has a membership working group, who managed to increase the membership numbers by 25% over a single year! Unfortunately UKUUG also lost 25% of it’s members over the same time. Now is this just people that wanted to go to one event cheaply and then let the membership lapse? Did something change that made the group more attractive to new members while putting off the old ones? At the moment it doesn’t seem to be that known. That’s one of the things I want to work on. Also did people leave because it was a pain to renew? Would a direct debit make it easier for people to stay involved? It’s not like the UKUUG costs a lot. If you’re a lapsed member and wouldn’t mind giving me your reasons please feel free to contact me.

Oh yeah! I’m now on the UKUUG council for a year; I actually got voted in. W00T!

Disclaimer: This is my take on what was said. I may be wrong, have misunderstood or just have been confused. Again.