SUMMARY Re: [AUUG-Talk]: Personal Contributions - AUUG's Value Add

[steve jenkin]

Thanks to all of you that responded. Not sure what to say about the
other postings on the thread... At least *some* activity occurred.

My intention was to:
- get 'the silent majority' to speak up with a very low barrier to entry.
- actually create something of value that could be both on the website
and in the mail archive.
  The single biggest asset of AUUG is the knowledge, wisdom,
experience of its members.
  [I hesitate to use "collective" here.]

My conclusions about this exercise I'll keep to myself.

Here's the summary.  Perhaps Steve Landers & Co may put up a page with
some useful resources...
It'd be nice if someone, somewhere in the future was able to include
'AUUG' as one of the places they went to for help.

cheers
stevej
------------------------------------
Q: Where do you go to find answers to technical questions??


Steve Jenkin 28/9/06 8:21 PM
- CLUG <http://www.clug.org> and <http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux/>
- SAGE-AU, when I was a member <http://www.sage-au.org.au>
- Steve Landers for my Mac and TCL questions
- Neil Gunther (Performance Dynamics) for maths, physics and performance.
  <http://www.perfdynamics.com/>
- My expert networking mate for networking questions.
- Google is either useful in a couple of links, or a really big waste of
  time trawling mass of irrelevant stuff.
- I've used a local lawyer for employment related questions,
  and a Patent Attorney to write and file patents.


David Llyod 28/9/06 8:59 PM
1, If I can identify the appropriate forum or mailing list, I'll go
   there [eg. don't ask GNU Solaris questions on a FreeBSD mailing list]

2. If it's technical and I can't work out where to ask it, LinuxSA even
   if it's slightly off topic; the collective mind of LinuxSA can answer
   (1) or provide the answer 90% of the time itself

  If, on the other hand, I'd stumbled across a "Real Proprietary
Unix", and it
  was mission critical, I'd probably call a local company I used to
work for,
  explain the issue and see if they'd be willing to do the work :)

David Newall 28/9/06 10:48 PM- Web
- Hack (ie 'research')
- Books

Dave Horsfall 1/10/06 5:45 PM
  For my part, I use peer-reviewed sources such as books and mailing
lists,
  with the web stuff coming a distant third.

Enno Davids 4/10/06 5:25 PM
I find that where I turn for information depends most on where I am:

   - At home I still most often grab a book off my shelf.

  - At work, I will reach for a browser or man page as often as not,
     unless the topic is likely to be in the half dozen or so O'Reilly
books on the shelf in my cube).

  - If a suitable subject matter expert is at hand or I can think of
one who
    might be inclined to answer I will pass along a question,

  - then there are the mailing lists and other lesser (to me) sources.

  - Mostly my choice tends to be informed by:
    - how quickly I need the answer (can I tolerate an hour, a day, a
week) and,
    - what degree of trust I want to place on the answer I get.



-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~sjenkin