[NBLUG/talk] LUGs, venue, advocacy, dues/incorporation, and other thoughts

Sat Jul 23 10:17:01 PDT 2022

Regarding a venue, I regret to say I have reached out to Sonic twice 
over the last few months and have not heard any reply which is highly 
out of the ordinary based on their past responsiveness. I am unsure if 
my primary contact is overwhelmed or if there is another issue at play.

Talk members with Sonic connections, would someone be willing to inquire 
gently? Right now the question is "What would it take for us to resume 
meeting in Sonic's break room at 7 PM on the 2nd Tuesday of every 
month?" and we're open to discussion if there are particular limitations 
in place.

Thanks in advance for anyone who happens to know more,

A.C.
******
Board Member at Large, North Bay Linux Users' Group

On 7/23/22 07:16, Brad Morrison wrote:
> Rick: I also emailed the Pritchards from on July 16 and on July 18 I 
> heard back from Steven. I will include you on my response to them, I 
> just haven't gotten to it yet. I'll save all of that conversation for 
> between the 4 of us and then we can report back here anything that 
> might be particularly interesting or useful to the larger audience.
>
> On a separate note, thank you for all of your work over the years 
> maintaining LUGs and the various associated documentation! That's a 
> lot of thankless tasks and even though I've just barely scratched the 
> surface of what you have done, it is pretty cool to have you share 
> your stories and knowledge with us.
>
> Derek: social, technical, advocacy = sure, that makes sense. I assume 
> that you have observed this about me already, but I do not have a 
> computer science degree, nor nearly as much experience with technology 
> as most of the NBLUG participants that I have met so far. So I can't 
> keep up on the technical conversations, but it is still interesting to 
> learn (sort of). I tend to be more interested in our discussions on 
> various differences between Linux distros and package management 
> systems and why some packages are capable of being updated more 
> frequently than others based on which libraries a particular distro 
> may ship with or whatever. I was less interested in the conversation 
> we had about Comcast internet service and the various technical 
> aspects of the problems you and Matt discussed last time. But I faded 
> out after a while and left, and that's OK too.
>
> Venue: I did contact Sonoma Clean Power about their conference room on 
> July 13 and I heard back July 21 - they are only willing to let 
> community organizations that share their primary focus of combating 
> the climate crisis to use their classroom.
>
>     *Allan: have you heard anything back from Sonic yet?
>
> Advocacy: I am more interested in this aspect, in large part because I 
> can't contribute much to the technical development of open source 
> software. Part of my advocacy work involves more communication about 
> open source software, even if just to the NBLUG list. Even if we 
> doubled attendance at the monthly meetings (to the mighty number of 
> 15!), we would still only have a small fraction of the people on the 
> NBLUG talk/announce email lists (236/454 people). So at this point, it 
> feels a bit like inside sales, rather than the community organization 
> equivalent of cold calling - tabling at events. I am also interested 
> in referring people that are interested in contributing to other open 
> source projects via NBLUG. That is why I try to post links to other 
> projects I have heard of or interacted with. With Derek's 
> encouragement, I recently switched the OS on my OnePlus 6T phone to 
> LineageOS (https://lineageos.org/) from the stock/T-Mobile version of 
> OnePlus' Oxygen OS. That was quite a big project for me! I also 
> decided to go without the Google Play store and will hopefully be able 
> to delete my rarely used Google account in the coming months. That 
> would be an example of expanding the use of open source software 
> within our own membership. As far as attracting new members or new 
> users of Linux, I would love to have some referrals to helpful 
> websites for newbies. I usually refer people to Distrowatch 
> (https://distrowatch.com/), if they are already interested in Linux, 
> but not currently using it. There are far more people that use 
> Apple/Microsoft/Google OS software that don't even know what open 
> source software is. For them I usually start with the Wikipedia page 
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software).
>
> Dues: I totally agree that it doesn't make sense for NBLUG to 
> incorporate as a nonprofit or collect dues/donations, unless there was 
> a very specific goal in mind. My points about organizational structure 
> and membership dues were more related to my "discovery" that there is 
> no larger national/international LUG that NBLUG is a part of. I have 
> given the example of the NBEAA (https://nbeaa.org/) and their 
> relationship to the national EVA (https://www.myeva.org/) many times. 
> Not all of the people on NBEAA's Google Groups list are members of the 
> EVA, but for those that are, I believe that the national organization 
> reimburses the local chapter for some % of the dues from the local 
> members. The national organization also provides the 501c3 nonprofit 
> status to its local, affiliated chapters (as long as they follow some 
> basic rules/bylaws) and coordinates the local chapters bank accounts. 
> That is my understanding of the situation. IF there were a similar 
> national/international organization of LUGs, then  I would highly 
> encourage NBLUG to consider joining/affiliating. Since that doesn't 
> currently exist, it is a non-issue for now. And it would take months 
> or years to get something like that off the ground, even if I gave my 
> notice on Monday and turned that into a full time project affiliated 
> with an existing organization in the Linux/open source space (very 
> unlikely to happen). My larger point was that having a 
> national/international organization of LUGs seems like a really big 
> untapped opportunity to increase the interest in Linux & open source 
> software on the community/individual level.
>
> Hope everyone had a good workweek!
>
> Brad
>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2022 11:52:59 -0700
>> From: "Derek B. Noonburg"<derekn at foolabs.com>
>> To:talk at nblug.org
>> Subject: Re: [NBLUG/talk] NBLUG participants
>> Message-ID: <20220719115259.25ddde1d at numbat>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>>
>> I think of NBLUG as having three overlapping functions: social,
>> technical, and advocacy.  (Rick's HOWTO phrases things a little
>> differently, but I think we're close enough.)  We've been doing pretty
>> much 100% social since we started meeting again at Flagship.
>>
>> On the technical side, we used to have some sort of talk at almost 
>> everysort of
>> meeting.  I'd really like to get back to doing that, even if it's
>> something like every second or third meeting to start.  But we need to
>> find a venue before that can happen.
>>
>> As for advocacy, I know NBLUG used to do installfests, but I don't
>> think there's much demand for that anymore.  I'm open to suggestions
>> here.
>>
>> I don't see us trying to collect dues or actively soliciting donations.
>> I think that would add a layer of bureaucracy that no one really wants
>> to deal with.
>>
>>  From my point of view, the priority right now should be to find an
>> alternate meeting location -- one that allows us to do presentations.
>> (It would also be nice to have an indoor venue before winter).
>>
>> - Derek
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 17 Jul 2022 08:07:49 -0700
>> Brad Morrison<bradmorrison at sonic.net>  wrote:
>>
>>> Hey Frank,
>>>
>>> Thanks for providing the exact numbers! I didn't realize that there
>>> are so many people on the talk (236) and announce (454) email lists -
>>> that's a lot!
>>>
>>> For comparison to the North Bay Electric Auto Association (NBEAA -
>>> https://nbeaa.org/), NBEAA only has about 151 people on their largest
>>> Google Group email list, but they regularly get about double the
>>> number of participants at their monthly Zoom meetings (about 14-16)
>>> compared to the number of people that we can get to show up to Spring
>>> Thai/Flagship Taproom's outdoor tables in Cotati (about 6-8). Just
>>> for comparison's sake, the NBEAA has about $6280 in their bank
>>> account (mostly dues reimbursements from their "parent" nonprofit
>>> organization the Electric Vehicle Association -
>>> https://www.myeva.org/) vs. NBLUG's about $140 in the cash box.
>>>
>>> If anyone has any suggestions or feedback about how we could get more
>>> people involved in NBLUG or more people on the email list that want
>>> to show up to the monthly meetings or even just more sharing via the
>>> IRC channel or this talk email list, feel free to let us/me know. My
>>> main priority for NBLUG/the larger Linux & open source ecosystem is
>>> to get more people involved (whether they are users or developers or
>>> whatever). That springs from my hunch that more users equates to more
>>> interest/activity which leads to more donations/funds to pay more
>>> developers to grow the capabilities of open source software in the
>>> eternal competition with closed/proprietary/corporate software &
>>> systems.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Brad
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