Hi All
Just been glancing through the archives as I don't get the mailings at the moment.
1. Great to see that the Norwich pub meetings are continuing to be announced - I knew I wasn't indispensable :-) I can't make the meeting this month or in August but hope to start attending from September, depending on work etc.
2. ALUG meetings in general: saw some discussion of this from a week or two ago.
Seems to me that there are three types of meeting - social, technical, introductory.
Social we have (in Norwich at least). Technical (i.e 'bring kit' meetings) do happen occasionally.
Most of the discussion so far has been which of these two types of meeting to have and therefore the type of venue required. The feeling seems to be that the traditional 'technical support' meetings are less useful now than in the past. Certainly people don't seem to turn up to sunday meetings lugging boxes along as they did two or three years ago.
Broadband in the home means that access to 'bandwidth' is less of an issue. Maybe all of these factors together is why there has not been great interest in using the Norwich Internet Cafe?
Then there are 'introductory' meetings i.e. public events designed specifically to show Linux to interested people. These happen rarely if ever.
Unfortunately they require the most work and commitment and may never happen but without them ALUG remains inward-looking, as has been hinted at by MJR.
GNU/Linux is on the move into the mainstream on the desktop - it already is mainstream in the server world of course - but it may well be that ALUG is not going to be the group of people that is going to take that forward in our area.
Given the amount of time/commitment/dedication etc required to set up and run linux support and training groups for novice users, perhaps it will need to be profit-making not voluntary. I do believe that there are a lot of business opportunities for this with possible massive growth in the next few years.
Please cc any replies to me (easier to do than *not* to do on this list :-).
Syd
Syd Hancock wrote:
Hi All
[SNIP]
GNU/Linux is on the move into the mainstream on the desktop - it already is mainstream in the server world of course - but it may well be that ALUG is not going to be the group of people that is going to take that forward in our area.
Given the amount of time/commitment/dedication etc required to set up and run linux support and training groups for novice users, perhaps it will need to be profit-making not voluntary. I do believe that there are a lot of business opportunities for this with possible massive growth in the next few years.
We already do Linux and SME support commercially (http://www.convergent-ict.com) but for now I see little to suggest that mainstream punters are willing to pay for the transfer of expertise, or that we and others like us will ever have enought slack (time or money) to do this stuff for free. It's even a struggle to get SMEs to pay for consultancy; many seem to think that 30 years of experience has no value, but are happy to pay, say, £100+ an hour for an accountant or a lawyer.
We can do in a few hours what will take them days or even weeks, but they'd rather struggle on wasting time and money to save a few quid. That's the commercial reality...
Cheers, Laurie.
-
Laurie Brown -
Syd Hancock