[clug] Declining attendance?

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi Martin, Paul, all

> If attendance is already down then I wouldn't fragment that into a
> SIG. I think consolidation is a better answer...

HUMBUG has had this for years also.

And the Brisbane MySQL and PHP (now Brisbane Web Tech) user groups.
Interestingly, some others had a different "solution". Seeing the trend of other groups they were involved in, they started a "Brisbane JavaScript" meetup last year which of course -being the hot thing at the time- quickly gained a lot of traction with full meetings.

It's understandable that a thriving group doesn't care much for consolidation. Of course, over time, it'll decline itself. The annoyance is that people have to keep moving groups, rather than having an umbrella group that adjusts its focus over time.

I don't know what other groups are active in Canberra, but if you want to position CLUG as an umbrella, see what is of interest to people now. Linux is fairly mainstream with those who know about it. It's a tool just like a toaster, not a goal in itself these days. Not for most, anyway.
Consequently, things are much less geeky and much more practical.

Be really welcoming to that more practical crowd that doesn't care about kernels, and possible doesn't care about the intricacies of Free as in Freedom during their initial explorations of what Open Source software can do for them. They may just like that Inkscape and GIMP work really well, but would really enjoy a good tutorial. "Advertise" this outside the usual channels, gain new crowd (attract more women and kids, while you're at it).


Cheers,
Arjen.
-- 
Exec.Director @ Open Query (http://openquery.com) MySQL services
Sane business strategy explorations at http://upstarta.com.au
Personal blog at http://lentz.com.au/blog/