[vox] Extremely low meeting attendance!

[Bill Kendrick]

Wow -- on the heels of spending two hours of my time for LUGOD, when I
should be sleeping before a workday, Nick just emailed me regarding the
last LUGOD meeting (the Ingres talk)...

...it seems only _six_ (6) people attended!  That's extremely depressing,
considering our speaker drove for at _least_ an hour and 45 minutes each way!
(Also, at least two other LUGOD members did a bunch of work to find an
alternative venue for that meeting.)

What gives!?  I really feel like I'm wasting my time finding speakers,
and feel VERY bad that we're wasting somewhere along the lines of 5-6 hours
of our speakers' lives!  That's _shameful!_ :^(  (Can you tell I'm
flabberghasted? :^) )


I recall a day when our meetings pulled in 30-40 people, twice a month,
regardless of the speaker or topic.  Where are these people now?  Graduated?

So, time for a survey:  If you're still in or near Davis, and out here on the
'vox' mailing list, but you're not going to meetings any more, would you
please tell us why you're no longer attending?

Although I'm no longer physically _in_ Davis (though that will hopefully
change some time this year), and therefore not going around town and campus
posting flyers like I used to, I'm PRETTY sure I'm still doing the same
things that I did in the past:

* Finding (hopefully!) compelling speakers/topics
* Trying to announce meetings two weeks in advance, with reminders the
  day before (or at least of) the event
* Posting meeting announcements to other local LUG mailing lists
* Sending meeting announcements to local newspapers/etc.
* Posting announcements to online calendars and Usenet (when I have time to)

The main thing that I can think of that we're NOT doing any more is having
general meetings alternate which day of the week they occuring on.
We currently switch between social gatherings and general meetings, so the
meetings with presenters are always on the same day of the week: Monday.
(Sorry to those of you who have classes or work on Monday evenings. :^( )


Our next speaker will be Oracle, in April.  Should they expect the same
single digit attendance!? :^(

-bill!
pr at lugod.org
http://www.lugod.org/
Linux Users' Group of Davis