[wellylug] Notes from Meeting (long but good)

[Tony Wills]

At 04:00 12/02/04 +0100, you wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 10:02:51PM +1300, lug wrote:
> > bugger.
> > sed 's/nice guy/welcome guy/g' previous_email.
>
>oh and there i thought "nice guy" was another one of those club positions.
>
>greetings, martin. (can i be the nice guy, please? ;-)))

Well actually that was Jamie's name for the role in the draft meeting 
notes, I suggested that it was very kind of him, but another title might 
sound a bit better ;-)

Now that you mention it, I would like to point out that I'm not a very good 
candidate for welcoming people into the group, but as I suggested we needed 
someone to make new members feel welcome at meetings I was landed with the 
job.  I'm not really a 'people' person and have a terrible time remembering 
peoples names and even if I remember their face I probably won't remember 
who they are.

But I don't mind trying to get something moving in this area, so here goes:

The Problem:
==========
There are two categories of new members, those new to linux (or wanting to 
know about linux) and those just new to this group.

Both categories of new members who attend meetings often find there are 
groups of people doing their own thing, talking or working on some machine 
etc, and it's hard to get involved.  They may wander around looking over 
peoples shoulders but may not feel brave enough to barge in, they may not 
bother coming back either ...

The group that are new to Linux also need help to bring them up to speed so 
they feel able to participate, it's hard to ask those 'dumb' questions in 
front of a group who you assume are all experts and expect are all far 
ahead of you.

Action Plan:
=========
Firstly I would like to hear from 'new' members and ask them what they 
would like to see, what they are looking for when joining this group.

Then I'd like some volunteers to help implement whatever help we can give 
to these new members.
(I envisage we need someone to actually physically acknowledge new members 
[maybe this can be the person in charge of name tags as well], it would 
help if this person could remember names! ).

Feedback please! (either here or email me direct).

Thanks,

Tony W.