[clug] Future of CLUG main meetings

[Bob Edwards]

So we had a small CLUG main meeting last night, as to be expected when
there is no topic/speaker announced. We had a bit of a Q&A session.

One question that came up, and has come up previously, is how do we
best support "beginners".

Because CLUG was born more by university types (Tridge etc.) involved
in doing daily open-source development, and not so much by pure
"users", it has always struggled to identify strongly as either a
technically-oriented group or a more traditional user group. It has,
over the years, become somewhat bi-modal in this regard.

My observation is that when we have solid technical talks announced,
a lot more people attend the meetings, so there is a definite appetite
in the local community for that level of talks.

On the other hand, this leaves folk who are still finding their way
somewhat out in the dark.

It has been proposed in the past that we alternate between technical
talks and non-technical talks. My problem is that, whereas everyone
else in CLUG gets to choose if they want to come along or not based
on their interest in the talks, I kinda have to be there each month
to open up etc. I don't mind doing it when people are actually going
to come along, but I also have other priorities in my life.

Anyway, next month, George and I propose to have a bit of a showcase
of Free and Open Source games, which we in the FOSS community should
be celebrating. I'll demo and open up discussion on minetest
(http://www.minetest.net/#about) and others can put up their hand to
demo/discuss a FOSS game or three of their choice.

Now is the time to come forward and propose future talks for CLUG
main meetings, such as a beginners workshop etc., or, I suggest, we
may need to start discussing shutting it all down.

cheers,

Bob Edwards.