[wellylug] WellyLUG Future

[Jethro Carr]

> On 27/04/2018, at 16:26, Michael Coleman <michaelcoleman500 at gmail.com> wrote:
> For anyone interested here is an archive snapshot of how the wellylug website looked in its early days:
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20040605131123/http://wellylug.org.nz:80/
> 
> I think this webpage captures the enthusiasm typical of many linux users - these guys actually have dedicated a section of the webpage trying to convince visitors why you should use linux! hah, nice.

Blast from the past, I think I wrote most of the content on that page. :-)

> I would have been happy to commit some significant time into wellylug, but as Hugh mentioned, if there aren't people keen to talk or turn up, so you end up having the same 1 or 2  people giving talks, which I don't think is a great experience for attendees.
> 
> Hard to know why the enthusiasm isn't manifest like it used to be, possibly?
> 
> * linux users are too much of a minority
> * hard to get talks that aren't kind of "distro" specific.
> * maybe linux has matured to the point that people no longer need help with hardware and installing? :)

There’s huge usage of Linux in the server space, really it’s the glue that makes everything work, but I suspect a lot of former desktop Linux advocates have ended up on MacOS which doesn’t help the minority market share appearance.


I feel that the biggest issue for survival of LUGs came from Linux's increased ease of use. With the likes of Ubuntu being so easy to use and good online resources like Ubuntu Forums, stack overflow, etc, a number of the hobbyists who would have come along to meetings have much fewer motivations since they could instead get information they need online.

Not sure why we never really managed to attract more of the professional user base talking about their server fleets etc, but I suspect we all just got old, got partners, kids, demanding jobs and the desire to spend evenings chatting about the tech underneath got a bit less exciting. And with the tech “just working” you weren’t forced to go along to seek out help ;-)


Still it was great whilst it was lasted, made some long term friends via WellyLUG. And got my winmodem to work.

regards,
Jethro