[buug] (forw) List owner needed for callug_discuss at lists.berkeley.edu

[Grant Bowman]

Hi Jim, good point. I don't know if Larry has subscribed to the
BUUG.org mail list or how much time he has to contribute. Perhaps I
should have mentioned fedoraproject.org [1] and olpcsf.org in my
previous email. [2] There are many resources, people and groups that
might play a role but we have to start somewhere. While other groups
may be able to provide resources to help, unfortunately the Felton LUG
http://feltonlug.sturdywebs.com and http://olpcsf.org are further away
and I suspect have a statistically lower chance [3] of finding people
who are most likely willing and able to help a Berkeley user group on
a regular basis.

I suspect the interests of the Cal group's regulars will dictate the
direction it takes. Of course all the resources that can help
reestablish itself should be brought to (the golden) bear, the
traditional locus of activity of BSD [4] and birth place of many open
source projects including (but not limited to) CentOS, GIMP and
others.

Regards,

Grant


[1] Larry and I have had discussions about this. I think we agree that
Ubuntu with it's community groups, state by state local community
structure, focus on the desktop experience and existing user
population (especially in Berkeley from what I can tell) act as
"training wheels" into the Linux world for newcomers to begin using
Linux. No other distribution has been as successful reaching out to
"simple end users" as the Ubuntu community project. As a Fedora
Ambassador I try to talk about Fedora with people who might be ready,
willing and able to try Fedora however I have learned a few things. In
my experience the number of people with that level of interest is
relatively small and quite often those people already know about
Fedora and/or many other distributions, some of which I have had
exposure to myself.

[2] The OLPC project has put over two million Fedora laptops in kids
hands all over the world and the SF conference in October had people
attend from all over the world.

[3] I also factored in my knowledge of the active members of the
original groups I mentioned.

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution


On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 4:07 PM, jim <jim at well.com> wrote:
>    larry cafiero might be interested in knowing about
> this, given his flirting involvement in college-based
> lugs.
>
>
> On Tue, 2011-04-19 at 15:13 -0700, Grant Bowman wrote:
>> Rick, thank you for bringing this to the BUUG list. If there are
>> annual things that a campus group must do, perhaps a checklist would
>> help busy students maintain continuity during the frequent group
>> transitions.
>>
>> Paul, I'm sure some people from the buug.org, berkeleylug.com and/or
>> ubuntu-california.org groups would be interested in helping out. Let
>> us know what we can do and when you are planning meetings and events.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Grant Bowman
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 2:00 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
>> > Quoting Paul Ivanov (pi at berkeley.edu):
>> >
>> >> I'm game. Should I contact CalMail directly, or go through you?
>> >>
>> >> ditto for the -announce list.
>> >>
>> >> > It would be nice if CalLUG could be revived, but first things first.
>> >>
>> >> I'd be up for this, as well.
>> >
>> > Good to hear.  To clarify, I'm just a subscriber and former attendee of
>> > CalLUG's on-campus meetings.  (Gosh, it's been a while:  Their brief
>> > revival ended in 2007.)
>> >
>> > I gather from the announcement that you would write to CalMail Staff
>> > <consult at berkeley.edu>, to step up and take over as listadmin.
>> >
>> >
>> > We can and should talk about what's required to revive CalLUG.  I
>> > watched the LUG die, get revived, and die a second time, so I think I
>> > know the major pitfalls and can help you avoid them.  I've been thinking
>> > of adding a section to the Linux User Group HOWTO[1] about the
>> > particular problems of college LUGs.  Here's the short version:
>> >
>> > 1.  Maintaining accreditation.  In CalLUG's case, that would be through
>> > ASUC.  Accredited groups get access to Internet server resources,
>> > publicity, use of rooms, right to post flyers, sometimes modest funding,
>> > etc.  But you have to file timely paperwork.  Failure to do those
>> > filings killed CCSF LUG.
>> >
>> > 2.  Continuity, especially over the summer break.  By that, I mean two
>> > things:  CalLUG kept having a syndrome where the officers would get too
>> > busy in May/June preparing for finals, nobody would have time to make
>> > arrangements to ensure out-of-band means of communication in case the
>> > CalLUG server went down, and nobody would have time to ensure
>> > replacements for officers being graduated.  Some combination of those
>> > two problems seems to have killed CalLUG, both times.
>> >
>> > [1] http://tldp.org/HOWTO/User-Group-HOWTO.html
>> > Also by the same author:  http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Linux_PR/newlug.html