From: Sean Reifschneider To: Shane R. Spencer Subject: Re: looking for LUG mentor. Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 00:37:10 -0700 (Sun, 22:37 AKST) Sorry for the delay in response to this, I was away on vacation when you wrote, and have been having a hard time getting caught up since returning. On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 11:17:22AM -0900, Shane R. Spencer wrote: >I wonder how difficult it would be to set up a mentor relationship with >NCLUG primarily for setting up an internal structure, possibly sharing >presentations, I am sure there is more than the rest of the LUG >including myself just don't know about. It really depends on what you mean by "sharing presentations". Obviously, it's not going to be likely that the people presenting at NCLUG are going to be able to travel to AKLUG. We have filled up the meetings for 2006 already, so we have plenty of topics, but many of those presentations don't have slides available on the net for you to download, let alone the ability for you to necessarily have someone with the experience to be able to stand up and talk through them even if they did. I'm not familiar with the situation up there, but we don't tend ot have TOO much of a problem with locating presentations. More rural places almost certainly will, but have you gone through asking the LUG list subscribers if they have anything they can talk about, or any suggestions of local folks that they would like to hear talk? Have you tried contacting local Linux-based businesses, ISPs (they often run Linux), and schools with computer departments looking for leads on presentations or presenters? One thing we've done in months where we didn't really have presenters is to do "Lightning Talks". These are short talks, usually between 5 and 10 minutes, showing something that someone has done or has figured out. In fact, some places are moving towards REQUIRING all attendees to present on something, like foo and bar camps, for example. "I use Thunderbird to read mail, here's what I like about it". That sort of thing. Another idea I have is to download an watch an episode of Nerd TV at the meetings. It's from Cringley and is downloadable from PBS. Then, after the show, have a round-table about what people found interesting about it. This is a great way of getting discussion going. We also do the Hacking Society meetings the remaining Tuesdays of the month, so there are tons of opportunities for people to show up. We have some people that go to them all, some that just go to the LUGs, some that go to Hacking Society, and some that mix it up. Hacking Society is just getting together with laptops at the coffee shop with wireless and chatting, coding, doing e-mail, reading /., whatever... If you'd like to set up a chapter up there, let me know and I can get you set up on the hackingsociety.org site. My last idea is to set up study sessions at the meetings. You could pick a subject or piece of software for the month, and then everyone try it out and discuss things about it at the next meeting, compare notes, discuss lessons learned, etc... Those are my ideas. I'm sure, if you posted on NCLUG, that you could get some more discussion going on, and that people may have some more suggestions on things you might be able to do and folks may also be able to offer other help. I will say that you shouldn't expect people from NCLUG to be quick to take up doing tasks for you. It's often hard enough getting people to take up tasks for the local meetings, and the core group that really does get things done tends to not have many cycles spare for other things. However, I think you will certainly get good suggestions on how to achieve the things you want to in your LUG. Thoughts? Sean -- You know you're in Canada when: The weather reports starts with "All temperatures are degrees below zero unless otherwise stated." Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability