[vox] Social gathering tonight! (Tue 3/7)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bill Kendrick (nbs at sonic.net):

> If you build it, they will come. ;) Starting a LUG is not that hard,
> especially if you start out informal & worry about things like
> non-profit status later.  There are lots of docs out there on how to
> do it, e.g. Rick Moen's "Recipe for a Successful Linux User Group"
> http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Linux_PR/newlug.html ;)

Also, if LUGOD wishes, it could help the folks in Woodland and Yolo
County environs by adopting them as a SIG.   (Could offer Web page,
entry on the LUGOD calendar, own mailing list.)

Here in the Bay Area, CABAL got started as the installfest SIG of BALUG
(meeting at The Coffenet Internet cafe), which is its own story:
Essentially, a bunch of us who'd had San Francisco PC User Group Linux
SIG meetings and installfests downstairs at The Coffenet building wished
to keep doing so after SFpcUG ceased being a tenant renting the spare
room, so we did so as an initially unnamed SIG deemed just integral to
BALUG, and BALUG's webmistress Cydny Fire Eisner (http://www.cfire.com)
listed our meetings on BALUG's schedule.

One day back in 1998 or so, we at the unnamed SIG scheduled a new
installfest date and sent Cydny mail asking her to add that to BALUG's
schedule.  She said she wasn't sure she should list a BALUG event until
she could double-check with BALUG President Art Tyde, who was right then
traveling in Europe and temporarily out of touch.  So, we said, 'Would
you be willing to list it if it were a _non_-BALUG event?'  She said yes,
so Duncan Mackinnon thought up for this purpose the name 'CABAL'
(notionally standing for 'Consortium of All Bay Area Linux' as an in-joke 
about our running installfests all around the Bay Area), and Cydny was
then willing to add our event.  Which is how the group got a name.


I maintain the User Group HOWTO for the LDP, and included some hard-won
lessons about organisational matters in section 7, 'Legal and political
issues'.  Please note in particular the bit under subhead Common
Misconceptions Debunked.
http://linuxmafia.com/lug/User-Group-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.1

(/me tips hat to LUGOD for going with 501(c)(7) social and recreation
club status rather than going on a dumb bureaucratic deathmarch towards
501(c)(3) for no compelling advantage.)