Right, here goes nothing...
We've never really had a good result as far as talks/demonstrations run, there's either generally not the turnout, or the interest in the talks, or enough spare time in the world. What I'd like to see, sometime, (and this goes doubly for the lurkers on the list) is some suggestions for talks, what you want to learn about, etc. It'd be good to see more of the hundreds of subscribers to the list turn up to meetings, if only to say hello. Is the problem that the meetings are on the wrong days? or in the wrong places? I'm sure there are many of us willing to travel to other places if there's a meeting held there.
Basically, I think what I'm trying to say is this: * We can't do talks without topics * We can't do talks without people interested in the talk (i.e. turning up to said talks) * ALUG is a community, we have no real "leadership", the decisions to do things are made by the members.
So, maybe it's time to find out what people want out of the group?
Do we want a full from scratch to desktop linux install demonstration? If so, which distribution? Certainly we have quite a few debian developers in the group, maybe we should go right through an install from the beginning to having X running, with KDE/Gnome/XFCE4? Do we want a demonstration on reuse of old kit for small servers, samba, LDAP, HTTP, FTP, etc? How about someone talking on how to give talks, maybe that'd be useful? Maybe demonstrations of what other Free operating systems can do?
Do people want to know about specific topics, like 3d, DVB, graphics, DTP, Office applications? Without a starting point we'll never get any talks written.
Do we actually want talks, or a quick guide on the website for how things work? should we be using the ALUG wiki more? should there be more technical documentation/recommendations available from the site?
Maybe we should start with a set of subjects, perhaps as part of the ALUG wiki, and go from there?
Thoughts, suggestions, and anything else to the list. :)
Thanks,