[AUUG-Talk]: Constructive Ideas for AUUG

[Michael Still]

Raymond Smith wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> 
> On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 08:00:25AM +1000, steve jenkin wrote:
>> This was thrown out by David (?) so why don't we respond :-)
>> The Collective Wisdom of the Group should be worth something - and it
>> may take the load of the Board who are quite overloaded...
>>
>> 1. Leverage what *is* working.
>>    - There are 2 or 3 working chapters.
>>      Like SAGE-AU used to do, take simple videos of the presentations
>> and make available on the web.  David Conran's talks provided more than
>> one talk for CBR.
> 
> I like the idea of recording and distributing presentations.
> This would also give us more content for the DVDs when start
> shipping them once more.

This has been discussed by past committees, and I don't recall the 
reason that it didn't happen. I suspect it's as simple as an 
enthusiastic volunteer needs to do the recording -- the distribution 
isn't too hard these days.

How about putting those videos on something like Google Video as a 
promotional effort?

>> 2. Leverage the conference.
>>    + AUUG *always* gets world-class speakers to the conference.
>>      Schedule them for more than one speaking engagement - it's a great
>> focus for another chapter to hold a metting and their organisers to put
>> in a special effort...
> 
> This is definitely worthwhile. I remember I first met Richard Stallman
> when AUUG brought him to a few different Capital Cities. Was a very
> interesting evening.

I see that the AUUG conference programme has a "LUV day" on it. Is that 
an effort to engage the local LUGs, or something else?

>>    + and my favourite: Video all or some of the talks and make them
>> available *after* the event.  For the first 6 months, at a cost, then
>> free...  The production values don't have to be "perfect" - just good
>> enough.  After all, it's not a soapie.  The content is what's important.
>>    + I'm sure there are a number of academics who'd appreciate some of
>> these talks being available to show their students... Ask Dr Toomey.
> 
> These are all good ideas too. Given the sprint to the conference,
> probably we won't do it this year. :-) But definitely something 
> for next year. I believe that the linux.conf.au folks have done 
> similar things for their conference.

LCA doesn't charge for the videos though, and has had at least one year 
where all the recordings were found to be corrupt (so, the collection is 
not complete).

>> 3. Profit!  (oops.  That's Mikals' 3 step formula)
> 
> :-)
> 
>> 4. Limit the amount of work volunteer organisers undertake.
>>    + I tried this with the CBR group - one longer, multi-speaker event
>> every quarter
>>    + and take on limited commitments. Far better to do *2* things
>> brilliantly, than attempt 5, not do 2 and foul-up the others...
>  
> Agreed. A big challenge for this years board is Liz's abscence. 
> We definitely do not have the time to do everything we'd like 
> to do for AUUG.

Hmmm. This I think this is the crux of the issue... LA seems to have 
built a very strong group of volunteers, whereas AUUG doesn't seem to 
have managed to do that recently.

Mikal