> Attendance is clearly down overall. By contrast, membership in the
> group, as measured by s*bscr*bers to the lists, is level and has been
> for five or six years.
>
> So meetings aren't as appealing. Why? I can think of several reasons.
4) Some people on the list aren't in the geographical area.
(freeloading bastards!)
5) It's easier to browse the list and make inane replies at work, or
at 4am, than it is to get off work at 6:30 and goto a 7:00 meeting
halfway across the bay area. Or to convince myself to get up for one
on Saturday morning.
> 1) Little is available for raffles. My view is that if this is the only
> reason you're coming to meetings, stay home. We're not in the raffle
> business, and we're not here to give members free stuff. It's a nice
> option, when we have it. But the market has changed and vendors are less
> inclined to spend money to supply groups with swag.
I might be a minority, but I *never* went for this reason.
> 2) We don't typically have presentations. There are huge groups out
> there who routinely have presentations and large meeting attendance. Our
> experience has also been that presentations tend to bring in attendees.
More regular presentations would probably help. Of course, finding
people to give these presentations can be somewhat of a logistical
issue...
> 3) It may be that Linux these days is easier to use, meaning there's
> less reason to go to meetings for help. Perhaps corroborating this, you
> may have noticed a decrease in list traffic over time.
Also, the immediately available knowledge base is now much larger,
making the prospect of, "Go to meeting, ask if anyone can help, try to
determine if any of the people who said they can help can *actually*
help, hope things work out ok..." less attractive from a
support-seeking perspective.
> I'm of the opinion that more meetings dilute attendance at the main
> meetings. That's just my opinion. I know of no other group anywhere
> which has as many meetings, particularly for the geographic area and
> population we have. NTLUG (North Texas LUG) lives in the Dallas-Ft Worth
> metroplex, where there are probably 6 million people, but only one
> meeting in Irving, between Dallas and Ft Worth (they also have
> presentations). The only reason we have this many is that enterprising
> folks decided that they wanted meetings closer to home, and were willing
> to run them.
Obviously you've got more experience with the meetings than I have,
but I don't really agree. IMO the meetings are kind of a
take-it-or-leave-it thing. If there's no meeting within 1/2 hour's
traffic-battle, do I drive 60 or 90 min to downtown tampa, or do I go
next door and have a beer instead?
> What would get people to meetings? Maybe...
>
> 1) Make Linux harder.
I'm on it!
> 2) Pay scantily clad beautiful women to attend.
>
> 3) Give presentations.
Perhaps these two could be combined somehow...
> 4) Have fewer meetings in more centralized locations.
As mentioned above, I think this will reduce overall attendance
without significant effect upon the attendance at the remaining
locations.
> 5) Have meeting leaders who are so charismatic that even if they don't
> have presentations, people will come just to watch them sit in a chair.
Roblimo?
> But there comes a time when 2-5 or 5-10 people at a meeting simply isn't
> worth it for the person running the meeting. Most of us have tried to
> get people to give presentations, to no avail. (And even then, many
> presentations sail way over the heads of attendees.)
This is to be expected for an audience that is a combination of
newbies and experts. Either it will bore the experts, confound the
newbies, or be nonrelevant to both.
> So it's up to individual meeting leaders (who, after all, volunteer to
> do this) to determine whether leading a meeting with slim attendance is
> worth it. I can't fault them if they decide it isn't, and I don't think
> anyone else should either. This isn't a *group* decision (though people
> are welcome to weigh in). It's the decision of individual meeting
> leaders, since their time and effort is what's involved.
dylan seems to have become the defacto st pete leader, as you
mentioned. The sarasota group seems to be lurching along under its
own liquor-stimulated impetus ;-). As far as the other meetings
(Brandon, NPR, Dunedin, ...), either someone will come forward to lead
them to glory, or they'll collapse under the weight of apathy.
-- Tcsh: Now with higher FPS! http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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