[Talk] AUUG'S Declining Membership

[Glenn Huxtable]

Like Greg Rose and Frank Crawford - I too recall the days of the AUUGkj 
management committee before we had a Business Manager, and the vast 
improvement in the management of AUUG after we appointed a B.M.

Sure, having a business manager is an expense, but one that AUUG cannot afford 
to do without. AUUG will not grow without a business manager, it can only 
shrink.


I also recall the early years of SAGE-AU where we held electronic committee 
meetings. Under Hal's chairmanship we did get a good deal achieved - set up 
SAGE-AU and organised the first two conferences.

Under my chairmanship, as the second president of SAGE-AU, the electronic 
meetings did not fare so well. We were not able to "meet" often enough, 
suffered numerous interruptions (work goes on) and achieved less than I would 
have liked. I accept a lot of the 'blame' for this, I guess I was not as 
organised (or something) as Hal or as good at following up on things.

Towards the end on my term, I recommended that SAGE-AU move to face-to-face 
meetings, which was unfortunately rejected at the time. Someone correct me, if 
I'm wrong, but I believe that the SAGE-AU committee meet face-to-face at least 
a few times a year now-a-days.

I cannot see SAGE-AU having grown so successful if they were still only  
meeting electronically.

Not only does the AUUG committee need to meet face-to-face, but AUUG has to be 
prepared to meet reasonable expenses to freight committee memebers to meetings.

As a one-time-committee-person from WA, I'm aware how much my involvement cost 
AUUG. I'm also aware that AUUG will not continue to be the national voice for 
Unix users (etc) in Australia if the management committee  membership becomes 
dictated by who can afford to attend meetings (ie locals only). If it ever 
went that far, AUUG would be in danger of degenerating into local unix user 
groups in each state, and I do not believe there is enough interest at that 
level to  carry such groups for long.

In my mind, the two most sure things that AUUG can to do decrease it's life 
span are to axe the business manager (figuratively speaking :-) and 
face-to-face committee meetings.

Glenn