[TriLUG] The Direction of TriLUG

[Tanner Lovelace]

On 5/24/07, Matt Frye <mattfrye at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to open a discussion about the direction of TriLUG.  There's
> obviously concern that TriLUG is becoming more internalized,  and
> that's something I want to fix.  I'm sure there are many other
> concerns, but I need your help.  I recognize that there are many, many
> people who have great ideas, but don't have time to be on the SC
> proper.  In that interest, I'd like to form an advisory committee to
> bridge the gap between the SC and the membership.  Start by responding
> constructively to this thread.  We'll go from there.
>
> Let's all work together to make TriLUG better.

Matt,

Thank you very much for starting the discussion.  One thing I would
love to see is more membership involvement.  Unfortunately, this seems
to be a perennial problem.  Most people are content to just sit back and
be fed content.  I don't know what the answer is to this, but perhaps through
this discussion we as a group can come up with some ideas.

Some things I'll throw out that I think would be good for the LUG are the
following:

- Smaller, more frequent events.  Not to take the place of our monthly meeting,
but to supplement it.  The LUG has been blessed/cursed with phenomenal
growth in the past few years.  Unfortunately this has paradoxically meant
that there are fewer opportunities to get involved.  People see big events
and think that small events aren't worth TriLUG's time!  I'd love to see smaller
events like lunches or hacking sessions or open source labs that people
could go to and get to know other trilug members and hopefully foster
a better sense of community.

- Bring back classes and installfests.  I know these are limited by volunteers
and by space, but I think they are a good way of reaching both the membership
and the public.  The LUG is nominally an "educational" group so this should
be part of its core mission.

- Expand the services of the website.  Look into moving the member db
into something like CiviCRM where we could do more with it.  Combine
that with the website and make some things there for members.  Use
that as incentive to join the lug.

- Several years ago, the LUG SC looked into updating it's Articles
of Incorporation to pull out stuff that really should be in the bylaws.
One particular thing I'd look into would be clarifying the status of
membership.  Right now, membership is nominally for life, but must
be only NC residents.  Maybe if we had the membership db in something
like CiviCRM we could make the memberships be for a defined time (1
year?) and have people renew.  We could still make renewals free, but
that might give us a better idea of how many members the LUG actually
has.  The membership db has over 500 people in it, but many of those
are not active anymore.  It would be good to have an accurate list
of current members.

Those are a few things right off the top of my head.  Like I said before,
thanks very much, Matt for starting this discussion.  Let's hope we
can continue the discussion in a positive light and focus on what
we as members can do for the LUG.

Cheers,
Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace
clubjuggler at gmail dot com
http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
(fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
increscent, all sable.