[wplug-plan] planning meeting, your input is needed.

[Mark Dalrymple]

> Who's a member? Here's my view: A member is any natural person who
> has, within the last six months, done one of the following:

> * Attended a General Users Meeting, InstallFest, or tutorial (more
>   formally, any WPLUG meeting at which there was passed around a
>   sign-up list),

> * Sent an email message to any of the WPLUG mailing lists (we could
>   exclude wpl ug-erie from this, since Erie's forming its own LUG),

> * Signed up online to become a member of WPLUG (we don't have
>   something like th is right now, but I'd like to have some way of
>   including the IRC regulars).

All great stuff.

Some other ideas hinge that this seems to weigh things in terms of
Power Bloc(k)s to the electronic world, and most of the day-to-day
work that BethLynn^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H The Board does is geared towards
the meetings and stuff in meatspace.  Finding folks to talk, the
mechanics of setting up the room, and PIZZA of course, so all a great
deal of the work is for the care and feeding of the meeting goers.
The mailing lists and IRC channel are fire-and-forget without a lot of
maintenance outside of our Fearless Jo2y keeping the machine running.

Pulling numbers out of my cat, if we have 300 members on the list, and
30 distinct folks who have been to a meeting in the last six months,
that's a 10:1 weight towards the electronic world.  We have two folks
running for a board seat, one who is popular online but is a real jerk
in person, and another who isn't online at all, comes to meetings, but
would be a great leader.  The vote for a board position may go to the
individual who could end up doing damage to the meetings.

WPLUG is interesting because it's a three-circle Venn diagram.  There
are folks on the list who don't come to meetings or hang out on IRC,
there are folks on IRC who think the list is stupid and meetings are
stupid, and there are folks who come to meetings to hang out and don't
really participate online.  (I pretty much fall in that last camp.  I
skim the lists, unless I see a posting from someone i know is
interesting or entertaining, and IRC is mainly a way to just hang out
with the folks I enjoy interacting with.  The meetings are what I get
most out of WPLUG, even though I can't make nearly as many as I want)

Do we weigh the membership in favor of the meeting goers by saying
online-only folks are only 1/3rd of a member?  Do we honk-off the
online-only folks by saying they're sub-WPLUG?  Do we give equal vestment
to individuals who live in Montana but are active on the list?  Are
certain whiny-brats on IRC members even though they have stated they
think WPLUG is stupid?

These are tough questions, and I have no answers, just throwing
a monkey(bot)-wrench into the works.  They may even be non-issues,
especially if we can find other groups that have a very inclusive
membership litmus test and haven't had problems with the online world
affecting the meetings.

++Mark Dalrymple.  markd at badgertronics.com  http://badgertronics.com
  "How many cultures have persisted through the millenia by just
   kicking back, relaxing and waiting out each new over-acheiving
   empire? Hmmm... The Spanish survived the Romans, the Ottomans, the
   Germans, and will probably survive the Americans..."
   -- ebradway