greetings from australia
best wishes for teh coming new year, and i hope you your friends family
have a happpy peaceful and holy christmas.
On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 07:19:28PM -0300, Sd?vtaker
wrote:> Hello.
> I am looking for some advice about starting a BUG.
> I didnt find a BUG here in Argentina in long time, only a pretty dead
> forum, so I gather with a couple of friends and we up to set it up.
> We''re probably getting support from our university since they
already
> got a LUG, so our path is pretty clear for the BUG setup burocracy
> (someone already fight half our battles setting up the LUG).
> Our plan is to influence the researchers and students to look a little
> more to *BSD and not just M$/Linux stuff like they do right now.
> Hope we could do that.
> I will appreciate any advice and help you can give me.
> Thanks in advance
> Sdav
well there is not much to say, looks like you have got all that you need
right there .. just a few things i would suggest from my few decades
(grin), i set up a usergroup for tandy colour computers and os9 user in
my local area sydney australia back in the 80''s it lasted some 10 more
years and then about 5 or 6 years ago i organised a few people and we
started teh bugs (berekley unix user group, sydney) our main users come
from freebsd and we have a few netbsd and one or two openbsd.
we also have a mailing list and a website, details can be found on teh
main freebsd.org site, in teh usergroup section.
sorry fro teh bragging, oh and for teh poor spelling, i am disabled
man, i have broken brain and wonky neurology that helps me make my
spelling and typing unique <big grin>
a few things i learned along the way was to work with people not
against people once you build a reputation for cohesive support people
will come to you and you will build a good strong support network, i
think the linux groups are starting to find this out. i have noticed
this change over teh years that i have been watch.
also do not make your organisational overhead too "bureaucratic" too
top heavy, too legalistic. people don''t like being "told"
what to do,
they will offer to help if there is a (well) defined structure that
encourages this basic kind of behaviour.
because linux is teh big brother it would be a good idea to hook up
with a local linux group and see how they do things and for a while
work with them, untill you have strong legs/shoulders and you can
walk/work on your own as a group. but, after that still have close ties
as people who have interests in both worlds will find it easy to work
in a cohesive envoronment .. being combattive serves only to isolate
people and keep people/groups territorial and very adverserial thus
doomed to very slow growth . if any at all.
the other side, that is having no structure, no defined bureaucracy and
leaving the users do thier own "thing", well the bugs here in sydney
is a good example of that .. it hasent progressed much beyond its
starting structure some 6 years ago, in a lot of ways it has gone
backwards even theough it has some 100-150 members on th mailing list,
we are lucky to get 10 bodies at a group meeting, usually its more like
5 sometimes less. while it is a resource it is not a good
"advertisement" for freebsd .. please note this is all my opinion, my
own thoughts based on watching several usergroups, os9, ibmpc, ibm os/2, as
well as a couple of not hardware mainly rather software related
usergroups over my 30 some years of computer related activity.
things could be better, for us in sydney, they will be when enough of
teh userlist git organised abnd start to want something different, note
that different is not better, it is just different .. it will offer
different services, differnt resources differnt aspects of teh
computing environment .. the computer world is so diverse it is not
always possible to make a single usergroup offer ''everything'',
pick the
things you want to do, it helps if you have people who are good in
those choosen skills and want to ''serve'' as tehy say. once you
have a
core just advertise, just advertise, and, they will come <GRIN>.
people look for resources when they want/need them, it helps if tehy
can find them easily .. if they feel comfortable welcome and have
enough of there needs met they will beome teh best advertisment off
all, nothing beats an enthusiastic, happy member of a club, usergroup.
i am still enthusiastic about "my baby" even though it has yet to
learn
to walk to talk and get its socialisation skills .. but it is growning,
oops growing i meant to say, er, write. as with all things it takes
time and patience ..
again best wishes for christmass and teh coming new year, hope you have
much success with the bsd usergroup .. much success.
hope, my ramblings help a bit ..
most kind regards
jonathan
note, please excuse my poor typing .. it is mostly all caused by what
is wrong with my brain and damaged neurological circuits, frontal cortx
damage. take care.
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