What Organizational Methods Do LUGs Use? 6
spacey-g asks: "What methods are used by Linux User Groups (especially those in the US) to organize their group? Is it president/vice president/etc., anarchy, amorphous, monarical, three branches of government? What types of rules are typically laid down during meetings: Robert's Rules of Order, WWF rules of disorder, etc?. With the Linux community growing every day, I feel it is important to understand how local groups are handling the task of managment and interaction with other groups." Any LUG officers: please feel free to share what methods have and have not worked for your groups.
For small ones, total chaos (Score:1)
Presumably the larger LUGs are much more organized, though I really don't know, having never been to a meeting of one.
Most seem to be run by consensus... (Score:1)
The ones I've been involved with, ACLUG [aclug.org], which I helped found, and CTLUG [ctlug.org], have a small "core" of two to four people very active in keeping the thing runing, organizing meetings, etc. I've never seen a LUG where there were elected officers, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't do it that way.
I think the whole open source mindset leads itself to groups like these. The Austin Perl Mongers [deja.com] run pretty much the same way as most LUGs I've seen. These people are more interested in learning and spreading the word than they are concerned about what the organization looks like.
AA meets Catholicism (Score:1)
"Hi, my name is Steve. stvcs@teleport.net. After using three different versions of Windows, I found The Penguin and have been Windows-free and have been clean since April '99."
At some point after, the alpha geek gets up and starts yelling for all new LUG inductees to stand up so we can properly interrogate them. Name, email addy and how long they've been Windows-free are the usuals. Sometimes we have them tell us their former-OS's horror stories, and how the Holy Kernel solves all of their problems.
Occaisionally we have to reinduct an old member. Usually it's because they've been caught with a dos image in lilo.conf, (Dual-boot is not tolerated) but we have seen the odd transgression of a member running Windows on 'unsupported' hardware.
After all of the newly-saver Lusers sit down, the alpha geek starts screaming for guest speakers. Most of the time they're LUG members who had a Windows temptation, or who have discovered the bit of killer GPL software. Sometimes we get..
Enough absurdity!
How my LUG (RedLUG) works (Score:2)
Guidelines for all clubs (Score:2)
I've seen two successful formulas.
The first is: make it democratic. This is the one everyone aspires to but rarely achieves. A club usually has a core group that first thought it up. Can they be trusted to establish *truly* democratic procedures that may well, in the future, result in their baby being yanked from their control? Mighty unlikely. However, it is possible. Just make sure that everything is out in the open. Generally, things are set up that are nominally democratic but as soon as the founders start not getting unanimous votes of confidence on every issue, they start "gaming" the rules to keep themselves in power. To avoid this, some precautions are wise. To wit: The books *must* be independently audited at regular intervals and *must* be made available for members to review on demand. If you have someone who can enforce Robert's Rules, that's cool. It's just not very likely that anyone wants to go to the trouble. (I remember an experience I had with a fairly new hobby club once. I moved the previous question. All I got were blank stares. It was actually kinda funny, in retrospect.)
The second way of setting up a club is intellectually more honest and can result in a great club. The founder(s) can simply say "Join my club." They can then run it as they see fit. They can charge whatever dues they want, run meetings as they see fit, put on any events they want to, and report it all on Schedule C of their tax returns as a small business (which is exactly what it is). In these situations, the business owner (founder) simply has to keep in mind that he won't make any money unless he provides a high-quality experience for his customers (the club members). If he entirely ignores them, they'll just leave and start their own club. But if the founder can stay reasonable, this sort of organization makes for much more efficient administration. It's the only way to have a club where it's in the self-interest of the people running the club to make sure that the members have a good time.
The only clubs where I've seen *fatal* organizational errors are clubs that are founded and run by one or a few people but that claim to be democratic. That sort of setup is a recipe for failure.
Try this (Score:1)