Organization

[Jeffrey Watts]

On Mon, 3 Jul 2000, Duston, Hal wrote:

> Well, I am not sure that I mean "organized", but rather, "not
> disorganized".  Even though Kulua is not "organized", there had to be
> some sort of "not disorganized" in order to get Emmett here.

Hehe, not really.  What got Emmett here was enthusiasm and IRC.  A lot of
KULUA members hang out in #kulua on OpenProjects.net IRC network, and Joe
Larcher (KULUA member) happened to strike up a conversation with Emmett in
#slashdot (/. and most other cool Open Source projects have their IRC
channels there).  Joe suggested Emmett come down, and Dustin and Joe
started looking at plane flights.  We then talked about getting the cash
necessary (about $400).  Dustin put out an email on the list, and 2 hours
later, we had the cash and a plane reservation was made.  No problemo.

KULUA was able to do this that quickly partly because we have some really
great members, but mostly because we are rather large (475 members total,
about 200 "active").  It's never hard to raise money when the most you
ever need to ask for is $20.

> Some of the things I would like to talk about (even here on the list)
> is what is our purpose, why do we exist.  Do we need to have a
> purpose, are we happy with the way things are (maybe we are, doing
> more stuff means more work/effort, etc.).

Not a bad idea.  In KULUA's case, what people really wanted was a
networking/social outlet.  Some geeks wanted to discuss technical answers,
but most wanted to meet other Linux/Unix geeks.  KULUA styles itself more
a "community" than a "user group", since the latter usually implies formal
meetings, and formal meetings weren't popular with KULUA.

Lots of people would _say_ they'd like to come to a formal meeting, with
speakers and technical discussion, but the reality is that most of the
people that said they would come never did.  However, when you have a
barbeque, people come out of the woodwork.  Go figure.  So KULUA doesn't
have any formal meetings unless there is strong demand for one.

I'm not sure about this, but I think that KCLUG's founders were folks that
weren't happy with KULUA's format, and wanted something more
business-oriented.  Can't remember though.  It's been a while.

> I am not sure if our membership is large enough, we need to work on
> building our numbers, (although we may have got the word out at LF2K
> somewhat, especially on Saturday)

Yeah, it goes slowly at first.  I've noticed that Linux User Groups obey
Moore's law somewhat, doubling about every year and a half.

J.

o-----------------------------------o
| Jeffrey Watts                     |
| watts at jayhawks.net         o-----------------------------------------o
| Systems Programmer         | "Over himself, over his own mind and    |
| Network Systems Management |  body, the individual is sovereign."    |
| Sprint Communications      |  -- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"      |
o--------------------------- o-----------------------------------------o