[wplug-plan] [Fwd: Re: Linux Users Group Question]

[Alex]

here, here!  (to be accompanied with appropriately
effervescent libations!). 

:-)

City Books...that was the coffee shop.  ;-)

Tis true, I'm not as Linux-involved as other
advocates, but I do enjoy and encourage any group who
gets together both out of a sense of comraderie and
technology focus.  The spirit of Linux is both about
an awesome alternative and a dedicated community of
people, some of whom are in it for the money, others
who seek the pure intellectual challenge.  This is the
spirit of Linux and the best of Western culture.

Jeremy and I started wplug while I was in da 'burgh,
he and I branched out to the left coast.  While he's
still "out there", I'm back in Pgh and working in
Wheeling (www.orrick.com).  I'll be interested to see
how MOV LUG works out. As Jeremy said, wplug started
slowly...but has always seemed to
attract...er...roughly...;-)...the right elements for
continuing success.  Coffee and donuts at meetings
always help, with a smattering of pizza if an
install-fest lingers on.  

..Alex.



--- Jeremy Dinsel <jeremy at gunix.net> wrote:
> Kevin Lebo wrote to me about starting a Linux users'
> group in WV. I
> wrote a good bit about the history of wplug in here.
> I thought people
> might be interested in it. The group is about to
> turn 6, after all.
> 
> Here's to nostalgia and all the great people that
> make wplug what it is.
> Thanks!
> 
> -j
> 
> -----Forwarded Message-----
> 
> From: Jeremy Dinsel <jeremy at wplug.org>
> To: Kevin Lebo <kevin at kevinlebo.com>
> Subject: Re: Linux Users Group Question
> Date: 26 Jun 2003 22:17:47 -0700
> 
> Do you know about these Ohio groups and their plans?
>
http://wplug.org/pipermail/wplug-plan/2003-June/001057.html
> 
> I've been putting off responding to your questions
> for a few days
> because I wanted to think through the history of
> wplug and see if I
> could come up with something inspirational and
> helpful as a reply to
> you. 
> 
> Perhaps I should cover things from the beginning... 
> 
> As our web site boasts (my personal joke solely
> because its a general
> statement with a very accurate time stamp), "[wplug
> was] Founded
> sometime around Friday September 26th at 11:37:08
> EDT 1997." At the
> time, I had been looking around for linux users'
> groups and had posted
> an ad on Linux Journal's GLUE site. Unfortunately,
> the information that
> I posted is no longer on the site -- more about GLUE
> later.
> 
> At the time, I had been a feverish linux zealot. I
> had been using linux
> for roughly two years at that point. Mostly by
> myself with some
> conversations with other users abroad. Not many
> people in my home town
> (I was 19 when I started using linux) had heard
> about it; few had heard
> of unix. Of course, this is the younger crowd that I
> was associating
> with in college.  
> 
> So reaching out into the world, I happened to find
> Alex L. He had either
> posted to GLUE or replied to something that I wrote
> there. After talking
> with Alex, I found him to be a zealot, too -- which
> is quiet a misnomer
> that leaves out his extremely pleasant and friendly
> personality. Alex
> enjoyed Linux, but wasn't using it as much as I was.
> He may have been
> looking for a challenge -- such as starting a linux
> users' group. In
> some of our earlier meetings, we spent time trying
> to convince Alex to
> practice the religion he and I were preaching. 
> 
> After convincing each other in email that starting a
> group would be a
> good thing, I set into motion the generation of our
> mailing list and
> sought out other people to join (or others sought
> and found the new
> group). Some of our original members are still some
> of my best
> friends--even though some of them have moved on.
> 
> Breaking from the nostalgia to relate some concrete
> ideas. Up until this
> point, the tasks that we had to focus on were:
>       *  Starting a group or not?
>       *  Setting up an easy to use mailing list
> which could be archived
>         and had little spam (I only mention spam
> now, but back then it
>         wasn't such a problem).
>       * Creating some rudimentary but useful web
> pages.
>       * Beginning discussions about having offline
> meetings.
> 
> The first meeting was at a nice coffee shop in a
> part of Pittsburgh that
> I no longer even know the name for (I haven't lived
> in that state for a
> little over four years). A group of four or five of
> us met for the first
> time. Most were very skeptical as to whether their
> time would be well
> spent at the meeting or not. At this point, we
> focused on the comradery
> of the event and not on the content of the meeting.
> We were building the
> foundation of the group. The original group helped
> to steer our future
> meetings by helping us find places to meet and by
> telling us when
> substance was required (as compared to purely
> socializing). 
> 
> Back then, linux users were few and far in between.
> Today, things may be
> different. People may be expecting substance sooner
> than later. You'll
> have to determine that by listening to your members.
> 
> Over time and as the group grew, we came to realize
> that we were going
> to be plagued with problems. Where to meet? When to
> meet? How often to
> meet? Should we do installation festivals? (This
> question came up after
> the other questions). We had some difficulties in
> finding places to meet
> at first. The coffee shop, a member's employer's
> office, a library and
> finally CMU -- which has remained our host for
> several years now. 
> 
> Until you have a firm location to meet at, its best
> not to plan for
> recurring meetings. Again, the membership of your
> group will tell you
> how frequently to meet. wplug has found that monthly
> meetings and
> bi-monthly install festivals have provided a good
> amount of attendance.
> I must solute the people who are keeping up the
> bi-monthly install
> festivals. It's hard work which is often taken for
> granted. 
> 
> In talking about meetings, I think I am missing some
> key points
> concerning the mailing list. At the very beginning,
> the traffic on the
> list will probably be extremely low. Fortunately, I
> had been learning a
> lot of linux (and linux was making leaps and bounds
> every day); In order
> to increase the traffic on the list, I would write
> to the list and talk
> about the accomplishments and struggles I had with
> the new ways of doing
> things. This would sometimes spark conversation on
> the list. It would
> also encourage others to post similar messages. For
> new comers to the
> list, I imagined and hoped that seeing these
> conversation would draw
> them in. 
> 
> To review, at this point, we had gone through the
> steps of creating the
> list and set up one or two small meetings. Then we
> focused on attracting
> members to the group by discussing interesting and
> exciting topics on
> the mailing list. Most importantly, we built our
> organization up online
> first and then tried to take it offline. 
> 
> Linux attracts people of awesome caliber; this is
> one reason why we were
> able to start having meetings at CMU. The members
> and their contacts
> were (and are) phenomenal. We set a goal to have
> monthly meetings with
> content (GUM -- General Users Meetings -- thanks
> again to Alex L). Often
> this meant that on top of finishing up school, I was
> also working
> diligently on speeches that I'd present at the group
> meetings.  
> 
> Again, because of the caliber of people that are
> attracted to Linux, we
> were able to get other members who wanted to present
> and share their
> enjoyment. If it weren't for them, our meetings
> wouldn't have been half
> as fun as they were. 
> 
> Around this time, I had found myself close to GLUE
> (the 
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