[SoCoSA/discuss] [SoCoSA/notify] Meeting: SoCoSA's future: tonight

[Steve S.]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 11:23 AM, Eric Eisenhart
<freiheit at gmail.com> wrote:

> Chris already said the main point: we're mostly Linux/Mac folks, so
> coming up with Windows speakers/topics is more difficult.

It seems to me that this problem (*nix/FLOSS admins who "favor" *nix
over MS-Win) has got to be one of the items that stick in the MS
marketing craw.

Is it possible, d'you think, to get some help from MS on this?  Do
they have staff who attend UG's and demo/lecture/etc on their
products?
Do they have budget to assist UG's to *pay* for speakers?  Etc...

Also... sure, it's cool to get a mfg-rep to talk on a subject, but a
good sales-engineer or product-support geek who works for a local
reseller might be able to do an equally-good demo...  even a better
one, in some cases, since s/he's often on the front-line of day-to-day
escalations from sites running the package being demo'ed.


> I do a
> teensy bit here and there with Windows, but there's no way you'd want
> to hear me talk about any kind of windows topic.

I think yours is a perspective that lots of us share, and COULD be (part
of) a good presentation:  Half a dozen *nix folks round-tabling with a
few MS-Win folks who understand Win/*nix interface issues,
interspersed with audience Q/A, could be a very interesting talk!

The problem, of course, is acquiring the "MS-Win folks who understand
Win/*nix interface issues"... even as a loan!  (Getting 'em on-board
permanently, of course, would be even better).


> I think part of the Linux bias was more of an open-source bias,
> partially influenced by the fact that we never got attendance very
> high.

And a "Linux bias" follows almost automatically from an OS bias.
:(
Yeah, yeah... there are plenty of OS projects that run just as well
on Win as *nix, and some that run better/only on Win.

But if you look at the % of Win-centric sites relying on one or more
open-source solutions, and the % of *nix sites doing so (even if you
don't count the operating system itself)... well, you'll see what I
mean.


> It's easier to identify communities around open source projects
> and find somebody local that can talk about a particular topic.  When
> trying to approach a company, you're talking about somebody driving
> up from the south bay (most likely), and it's easier to get that sort of
> thing to happen when the anticipated attendance is higher.  (yes, this
> is a vicious or virtuous circle: more/better speakers leads to more
> attendance which leads to making it easier to get speakers)

Hence my suggestion above, to look for funding somehow...and/or for
companies motivated to fund their people to come to SoCoSA.

$$$ can break that cycle, getting SoCoSA bootstrapped with good
speakers and large audiences so that it's easier to get them when we
have no outside source of $$$.


> And, hey, it's not like Unix and Windows are the only two things out
> there, but we'd be even more lost trying to help out mainframe admins.
>  :)

Yeah, but still... don't rule it out!  OS/400 boxen are (or were, last time
I looked hard) remarkably common here in SoCo...  It might be a
segment that SoCoSA could profitably address...


> I just did a quick review of the 22 presentations SoCoSA did
<SNIP>

Thanks for the interesting breakdown!  Someone suggested up-thread
that mayber the Win-Admin demographic just doesn't "do" UG's as
much...  Expanding on that thought:  is the "user group" really an
open-source-ish variety of what commercial houses do via paid classes,
annual conferences, etc?  That the Win-centric community expects
their technically-useful material to come in the kind of "LAN-per-class,
workstation-per-user, with a pre-printed workbook" package that comes
with $thousand-per-day prices... and they just aren't expecting much
from the user-group experience?

Really, I'm just speculating here.

But maybe there's a "LUG-to-LUG" backchannel where NBLUG folks
might talk to other LUG's & ask the question (or present the quandary)
"some of us tried to spin off an OS-agnostic "Any Flavor SA" group,
but we're not getting the Windows participation we hoped for / wanted /
need (to continue with a separate group).  Do any of you know of any
MS-Win SysAdmin UG's, or OS-neutral UG's?  Can you put us in
touch?"


- Steve S.
(who *is* interested in seeing SoCoSA continue...
but can't come to a meeting tonight
or indeed ANY meeting, SoCoSA or NBLUG, for at
least the next couple of months)