Last night's meeting went well, and since it was the first one I've attended in the new location, I'm probably a bit biased. <grin> So I've had some ideas cooking in my head for several months about how we can increase the awareness and membership of the monthly LUG events at NFA. With school starting soon, its even more important to try to engage people to attend. I floated a few topics last night and others chimed in as well with their own (thanks Bob and Bob for your ideas!), and others gave their valuable input as well. The short list: - Integrate ourselves with the Cogan fair, as Jack had suggested yesterday in an email to the list[1]. I'd like to suggest planning something that ties in well with Cogan, such as having a table set up (inside or outside the main venue) with printed HOWTO documents, an ECLUG 1-page brochure of some sort (describing who we are, where we meet, etc.), and an ECLUG-branded custom LiveCD, based on KNOPPIX or other variants. - Increased awareness through actual marketing (what?). Yes, marketing. This means printing up those 1-page brochures and putting them all over the local towns in the shopping markets (like the ShopRite, Stop & Shop, Big-Y, WAL*MART corkboard for announcements as you walk in to get your cart), and some announcements a week before the meeting on other local lists (GHGLUG, Craigslist, etc.) We could have a lot of fun with this, if we have some focused topics to deliver at the various meetings. - Primary and backup topics and speakers. We've floated this idea before, but I think it petered out before it really could take hold and become standard 'policy' of the group. - Giveaways, giveaways, giveaways! We've had some in the past before, and we should do it again. Glenn showed us the "Portable Apps" last night, and we poked around on the website. I'd like to tie this into a giveaway, where we pack a 512M or 1G USB key full of the most useful portable apps, and give them away in exchange for anwering a question or some challenge or something along those lines. - Vendor demos! We've had a few in the past (NSI, Ximian and others). I'd like to encourage more of that, including some "case studies" from actual people using Linux in a successful way in their business or hobbies. (suggestions and volunteers here are welcome and appreciated, of course) Paul did a demo many moons ago showing how he used Linux in his DJ rig. Things like that are great eye-candy for people to see how Linux can be used in innovative ways. That should be enough for now. Let's talk about how we can engage the students coming back to school in the next month with our September meeting. We have 2 weeks to get the topic nailed down and a speaker identified. I can burn a bunch of "Educational Linux" ISOs to bring, and print up some flyers to pin up at the various local supermarkets and the mall. Any ideas out there from the rest? Or am I moving too fast? [1] http://lists.eclug.net/pipermail/eclug/2006-August/002645.html David A. Desrosiers desrod at gnu-designs.com http://gnu-designs.com
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