[H-GEN] Room Bookings Update

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, Nikolai Lusan wrote:

> This has always been a problem, at one point we always had a first point
> of contact person on duty. Meeting numbers these days probably make that

Yes, I wonder when this stopped.  The first point of contact was 
specifically so someone approached new people walking in the door so they 
would feel more welcome.

> It also has to be appreciated that not everyone wants to help anymore,
> alot of us have been doing it for so long that dealing with the same
> issues [that are easily solved by looking at google or doing some basic
> reading] and doing tech support for a living means we have had our fill
> and given back over a hundred times what we have taken.

Which comes back to the problem of HUMBUG attracting new blood.  It is 
ironic that was OSS has become more popular HUMBUG membership has 
declined.   Online resources are much better now, granted, but there is 
still an important place for user groups.

I have to say I like  James Iseppi's idea of holding regular talk meetings 
like other groups in addition to the existing meetings.

What about one "talk" meeting and one long "computerfest" meeting per 
month.  If I was back in Aus I'd really be pushing forward with this, but 
I'm not :(

> HUMBUG is also fairly unique amongst user groups, in so far as all our
> meetings have had network access (hence the massive size of meetings
> before widespread, affordable broadband - and the issues we had with

Or even before broadband.  I used to go from 2400bps at home to 10Mbit/sec 
at HUMBUG.  The difference was so astounding that I had an odd occurance 
one day.

I downloaded a file.  The download window appeared and disappeared.  I 
thought something was wrong so I tried again.  Same thing.  This happened 
3 times before I realised I _was_ downloading the file.  It was so much 
faster than home that I didn't accept it was working.

>> Appreciate that we don't want to deal with
>> problems relating to MS products. That's we do for a living.
>
> Windows is not a *nix operating system. that's why we don't deal with
> it. I know I personally haven't dealt with windows professionally for
> years now and many long term members are the same.

I'm glad you said this.  I haven't touched MS-Windows to any significant 
degree for more than a decade :)

> People should come back to meetings in the hope of meeting like minded
> people with similar interests and learning more about *nix operating
> systems and OSS.

Exactly.

HUMBUG does need to pick up the advertising though.  Even in the early 
years we did quite a lot of online advertising (comp.os.linux when it was 
very popular, etc).  Is that still occuring?

Rob

-- 
I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy