[SGVLUG] Fw: Laptop computer - do you know anything about it?

[Charles N Wyble]

Christopher Smith wrote:
> Charles N Wyble wrote:
>> DYN: Jim Workman wrote:

> I used to manage the mail lists. We lost the machine that had them. Due
> to complications with our arrangement for that machine, we've never been
> able to reconstitute the mailing list membership. We still don't have
> the DNS set up properly. Some people have been "found" and added to a
> list, but as you can imagine this massive outage did a lot to kill it.
> I've talked with a few people about reviving the group, but that is a
> 2008 project for me.

Very interesting. Now that I am living in El Monte I am much closer to 
downtown LA etc. So reviving it is something I would be interested in 
providing some assistance with. Especially in connection with the Linux 
lab I am in the process of getting online.

>> who took over group leadership after he left? When did meetings go
>> comatose? Was a clean handover executed?
> No. LULA in general had no formal structure. Clay was "elected" at one
> point, but AFAIK noone ran against him. Running a user group is a royal
> PITA, 

Well.... I run a mildly successful user group myself. It can be 
difficult sometimes for sure.  If it ever gets to difficult for any 
reason, one must be prepared to formally turn over the reigns to someone 
else. Failure to do so in my opinion shows a lack of leadership and 
planning. I realize thats a strong opinion and statement.


and I think we were all used to Clay doing it all for us for so
> long.

Yes its funny what happens when you have a single point of failure and 
they fail. :)

  On top of that the group had kind of been bouncing around from one
> meeting place to another, and losing a lot of people in the process.

Ah yes. That is a major problem. Hopefully the Linux lab can also 
provide meeting space.


> He quit. You can question his motives for doing so, but frankly I
> suspect even Clay would agree that he'd been carrying the burden longer
> than he should have. He may not have always done the best thing for the
> group, but I'm sure if someone who was really willing to volunteer the
> necessary time and energy had stepped up with alternative ideas, it
> wouldn't have been a problem.

Of course. The trick is getting people to do that. I have been working 
on slow and steady growth of user participation.