[intl-discus] International user groups

[Daniel Brookshier]

I have been running user groups for the past 11 years and  
participated in others from an early age - if you count the Scouts  
and Explorers. The most important thing is to just hold a regular  
meeting with an agenda topic. Monthly works the best.

I'd also tend to just run it yourself. Most user groups do not need a  
charter or elections, just a purpose and someone willing to organize  
and M.C. the meetings.

Success is just a matter of having a large percentage of topics that  
meet the needs of most of the audience. That means making it a  
priority to work on basics and open source. If you have vendors, make  
sure that it is less than a third of the presentation (or that most  
of the audience already uses it). You also want a stable of topics  
and speakers. Canceling a meeting because the speaker can't attend is  
really debilitating and impacts the rhythm of attendance.

Building attendance is a matter of networking.  Talk to local  
universities, organizations, and even other related email lists.

It's just hard work and persistence.

Daniel Brookshier
Community Manager
214-207-6614

On Feb 15, 2006, at 9:55 AM, Tyler Mitchell wrote:

> Just re-sending this message directly to this list.  I would love  
> to hear more
> about how people are already organising regional user groups.
>
> The only one I'm involved is a sort of virtual user group for Western
> US/Canada, mostly focused on MapServer - we don't meet, we just use  
> a mailing
> list when people have ideas/questions.
>
> Tyler
>
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
>
> Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] International user groups
> Date: February 10, 2006 09:29
> From: Tyler Mitchell <tjm at timberline.ca>
> To: discuss at lists.osgeo.org
>
> One thing I would really like to see in the mid/long-term is the
> foundation supporting the development of regional, national and
> international user groups.
>
> Some countries and cities already have successful ones.  We have a
> successful international conference.  Other groups just need some more
> moral support, guidance/encouragement or maybe some infrastructure to
> help get things going.  My dream is to have at least one OSGeo user
> group representative from every country and then provide casual venues
> for them to meet together in a regional context.  I'm thinking about
> this at the moment because of the international
> membership/representation issues being brought up.  Having a  
> relatively
> small number of members in the foundation means we can't expect to  
> have
> extremely broad international representation among the membership.   
> Even
> if we strive to, it will be hard for members to vote for new
> international members who they've never met or dealt with before.
>
> If groups can be developed over the next year or so, then those groups
> would be an ideal place for the broader foundation community to get to
> know more projects and people internationally.  It would come quite
> naturally.
>
> While I think it is a good idea to have broad international
> representation, it is going to be hard to get so early in the  
> game.  We
> had representatives from at least 5 countries in Chicago - I believe
> that's a very good start.  Two board members are from Europe, that is
> very good as well.
>
>   An organised, globally dispersed, set of user groups will help
> everyone settle in.  OSGeo is a global party - it's going to take some
> time to mingle and meet everyone because the party just got started.
>
> Just some food for thought, hopefully we can come back to this idea
> after our initial structure is up and running.
>
> Tyler
>
>
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