Meeting

ME dugan at passwall.com
Tue May 14 23:13:55 PDT 2002


On Tue, 14 May 2002, Dustin Mollo wrote:
> We had a board meeting a few weeks at which I announced I am going to be
> stepping down as president of NBLUG after the June meeting and InstallFest. 
> I hadn't figured out what to do this month, so I was going to suggest that
> folks who are interested in voicing an opinion of the future of the group
> and perhaps may be interested in leadership roles attend tonight's meeting
> to discuss ideas.

This is not something new. Bill (LUGOD) stepped down as president to allow
Pete (LUGOD) to take over. This was not due to lack of popularity, but
lack of time, and energy to keep going! (It can become a thankless job as
a temporal vortex - no matter how much you do, you can do sooooo much more
to make it even better!)

I think I talked with Dustin briefly about this a few months before when
it sounded like he was thinking about taking a break (hope you dont mind
me bringing this up) but the problem of getting a "good replacement" is
not an easy one to solve. The brief discussion (much higher compression
than what I write here) is decompressed to fill space below:

-
Items a group may want in an effective leader:

* You need a candidate who has a wide and broad perspective of Linux
  (Ability:  *know about* Linux stuff, but not necessarily know all of
   those things in great detail. This helps to organize meetings and get
   people to lecture and arbitrate.)
* You need a candidate who is passionate, and energized about Linux.
  (Energy and passion inspires people to do new things, and bends
   time/space to such an extent as to pull more people into the group
   including the ones moving at the speed of light!)
* Someone who is an excellent planner, organizer, and has *excellent*
   social skills.
  (Critical to organize meetings, installfests, pre-plan speakers
   and social skills to deal with people who will have *strong* 
   opinions and balance group interaction so as to not exclude 
   others.)
* Someone who has "free time" to donate each and every month to the linux
   user group.
  (Time to organize is essential! 10 hours per month is probably
   a conservative estimate. Dustin could better estimate. :-)

Problems include finding people who have all of the above, but no free
time, or people who have all of the above, but are forgetful in planning
or organization. (Obviously other combinations exist.)

Notice however, extreme technical qualifications are not necessary! You do
not need to be a Linux god or Linux Guru to lead. (Granted, our present
president is a profession *NIX admin, and it certainly can help the
process, but is not absolutely as critical as the other items above!)

This can be reviewed when you look at "managers" in the workplace. The
manager does not need to know how to make all of the details work, but
knowing general information certainly does help the flow.

Of course, with all of the requirement, the rewards are great! It looks
good on a resume, you have the opportunity to earn the respect of your
peers and gain wide acceptance. You get your name introduced to the
technical world, and represent a group to some extent while at expos or
talking with technical leaders (can be more responsive to your questions.)
You also get to give away swag from various vendors and people who get
stuff from you seem to be appreciative.

Plus! You get a nifty title! (WooHoo!)

I would nominate anyone on our present board for presidential office. They
have been to all of the meetings (AFAIK - at least all of the meetings I
have been able to attend, not many lately.) They also seem to do well
enough keeping things together for Dustin, so they are organized.

We can hope that Dustin will still attend the meetings. (You will still
come to them, right?)

Sorry I did not have time to make this one... finals are coming up. :-/

Last, there are a number of online docs or "HOW-TO" for running a
LUG. They contain ideas from *many* LUG - spawned from problems *they*
have encountered over time - most/all problems we have never had.

Any cadidates may want to research these to see if any of these include
items that can be adopted. Perhaps work done by others can save you fron
rolling your own suggestions for "rules".

So, who would like the cool new status of the title?

Get a list of people who want it, and go from there...  (?)

-ME

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decode: http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/ about: http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html
     Systems Department Operating Systems Analyst for the SSU Library

> The only bad thing about tonight's meeting is that Eric can not attend.  He
> is my right hand man and I'd like to have him around for a disucssion of
> this sort, but I think we can make some headway without him and then perhaps
> have another such meeting perhaps in July.
> 
> In June, I believe, Brad and Eric were contemplating doing a talk comparing
> Red Hat with Debian.
> 
> So...with that said, if sitting around talking about how the group should be
> run and move forward, consider May a month off. ;)  If you are interested,
> please do show up, though.  Same time, same place (O'Reilly @ 7:30PM.)
> 
> -Dustin "Looking forward to retirement" Mollo
> 
> --
> Founder & President
> The North Bay Linux Users' Group
> http://www.nblug.org/
> dustin at nblug.org
> 




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