[ALUG] Ipswich LUG

[samwise]

On 02/02/07, Ted Harding <ted.harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hardly any of us
> are anywhere in particular. ALUG is the closest approximation
> to organised cohesion likely to be found for scores of miles
> in any direction.

Ah, interesting point.  If there were only LUGs for
Norwich/Ipswich/Colchester, I can see how that might discriminate a
bit, given the large number of little places there are in East Anglia.

> If it's OK by the people on this list, go to the page that lists Tony
> Dietrich,

I'll wait until I've finalised the plan, but I'll be happy to do that
if we join the collective.  :)

> The benefits are that great people are already managing them (I'm not
> involved in it any more!), so you can concentrate on organising great
> meetings

well, yes, but lug.org.uk would offer the same sort of thing and once
a mailing list and wiki has been configured, I don't think there'd be
much maintenance hassle.

>- and you have a ready audience for those meetings.  If there
> are Ipswich hands available to help run the websites and mailing
> lists, then offer on this list and see what happens.

I'm not sure how much pressure I want to put on others to play with
the websites and stuff so I thought I'd leave that a while - I'll let
ppl volunteer as they want.  For a start, I just want to arrange a
mailing list and a wiki page we can publicise and build on.  I'm not
adverse to integration with the ALUG but I want to make sure our focus
remains fairly local ...

> ALUG started in Woodbridge near Ipswich in 1999 (thanks Laurie).
> It would be disappointing to see Ipswich fork just because the Suffolk
> haven't got a meeting together recently.  Please fix that ALUG bug
> before forking the project...

A fair point.  If there were regular meets locally, I wouldn't have
posted!  :)  That said, I know most of the people I have bullied into
attending for the next 3 meets aren't that interested in Norfolk and
further-afield based events, so I don't want to put them off by making
them receive notifications for events they're not interested in
attending.

> Stay in ALUG and help run one of the oldest and largest LUGs in the
> country.  Oh, and you also get one of the best logo *ideas* ever
> (which I just added to the FAQ, although reading back in my notes, I
> see me blame Adam for it, while James and Keith blame me for it).

Hah, well ... after a suitable voting period, we've come up with:

iPlug

which jumps on the IPcity and Apple iPod bandwagons at the same time
AND could well result in some fantastic logo designs if we find a
suitable artist.  :)  I'm not convinced a penguin on a horse beats
that ... hehe

> I can see some argument for running several sites linked from the one
> hub, for marketing and management reasons (I've suggested this in the
> past, but I think only the library and two planets ever got online on
> their own), but I don't see a benefit in split mailing lists yet.

Well, after what I've read so far, I'd be happy if it were possible
for us have a sub-page in an ALUG wiki* which we could perhaps point
to using a CNAME DNS record (probably from lug.org.uk) so that we
could publicise it locally.  The only point I'm not sure on is the
list - I need to go back and ask those who've shown an interest
already and see what they'd prefer.  If they're happy using the ALUG
mailing list, that's fine ... but I don't want to make that decision
without consulting them.

* Though I haven't investigated, is the current wiki as flexible as
say MediaWiki?  It seems quite slim at first glance.

> Are
> you planning to host porn and spam or something else we wouldn't want?

Sure, isn't that the reason everyone runs linux?  To get better
performance for shovelling out their pr0n spam?  :)

Peter.