How many mickles makes a muckle

Or

“How do you measure how busy a LUG is?”

I love Linux User Groups, I really do. Regional LUGs in the UK are in a superb position to help people and foster greater adoption of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in homes and businesses. They often have instant access to very technically sound people with masses of personal FLOSS experience. Many LUGs have been around for some years and have picked up new members organically along the way. Some have actively sought new members, other have been more static. The odd LUG has gone to visit the choir invisible, but those are few and far between.

I guess that’s one of the UK LUG movements great assets and one major downfall – they’re all different. Some have regular meets in a large well-lit air-conditioned net-connected office, others meet in the back of a smokey pub. Some have installfests or bring-a-box meetings, others have only a mailing list and rarely meet up. Some never meet up at all.

I’d love nothing more than for all LUGs to be successful. How do you measure success though? Here’s a few metrics you might want to consider:-

Number of members

Here’s where we stumble at the first fence. How do you define LUG membership? Some LUGs have a constitution which clearly states what makes a member of the group, these are few and far between however. Maybe you pay money to become a member in the same way UKUUG and FSFE accept donations. Most LUGs in the UK have an unwritten rule that when you sign up to a mailing list you’re a member. Others are even more relaxed and just telling someone you’re a member is good enough. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things how a LUG measures its members, and I don’t think ‘bums on seats’ can or indeed should be used as a sole measure of a LUG.

Volume of mailing list mail

Some LUGs have very active mailing lists. Hampshire LUG, Greater London LUG, Bristol & Bath and Anglia LUGs are all very active mailing lists. Others are more or less idle. Most are somewhere inbetween, not covered in cobwebs, but not causing mailboxes to fill up all over the UK. An active mailing list is of course partly as a result of those LUGs having relatively large memberships, but there’s other factors in there too.

• Enthusiasm
  When Linux was new and didn’t work people were itching to make it work. Now there are such fantastic distributions as Fedora Core and Ubuntu it’s often the case that most of the time most of the stuff works. Amazing really, we are the architects of our own demise, FLOSS is just too damn good!

• Time
  Mailing lists frequently become quiet during the evenings as those people who read their mail at work switch off their PC and go home to their real lives (lucky people). Mail fluctuates through the year as those people with lives (damn them) go on week-long holidays away from computers (loonies) or spend weekends visiting families (nutters).

• Expertise
  A mailing list with little collective technical expertise can go very quiet pretty quickly. Whilst enthusiasm can go a long way, without some minimum level of technical expertise members may decide not to post their technical questions to the mailing list if they think they have a whelks chance in a supernova of getting a useful answer.

• Geography
  LUGs which are spread over a very large geographical area often don’t meet up in person as often as LUGs which are more densly packed or have good transport links. As a result they often have a greater volume of mail on their list as it becomes the primary method of communication.

• News
  No news is bad news. Whenever some major piece of news comes up on slashdot/theregister/digg many LUG members post links to their local LUG mailing list. This gives a great opportunity to debate the issues of the day and helps those who have not yet formulated an opinion to do so. Mailing lists provides a very focused discussion forum and as such news articles can spawn very lengthy and heated debates. There’s almost always some LUGworthy news article that could be worth discussing, but many LUGs members don’t actually bother passing it on.

• Leadership
  Each individual LUG need strong leadership. In the context of the mailing list that might include announcing meeting dates and venues, passing on contact from local businesses or in other ways starting the conversational ball rolling. If the leader or indeed anyone provokes discussion via these means then a constant flow can continue. If no regular status updates or other local news is posted then people might feel the LUG is dying. Imagine the sight of a hundred LUG members staring at an empty mail folder Sad isn’t it.

• Other LUGs
  Surprising though it may seem, quite a few people are members of more than one LUG. If there are a few LUGs in an area with one being more active than the others (possibly due to the reasons already stated above) then one can get top-heavy, draining brain-cells from the neighbours. One LUG may look like it’s dying due to lack of mail on the list when in fact a bunch of its members are contributing to the neighbouring LUG.

• Personality
  Perception as a lot to with how people react to LUGs. Each LUG has a personality. It may be seen to be structured, ordered, measured, straight with a distinct direction and purpose. It may be more freeform, fun, irreverent, meandering or it may indeed be a mixture some or all of those values. People will align themselves to an online community if it at least matches some of their own personality traits and values. Disagreements can occurr in any community of course, and people may leave not due to individual arguments but a build up which gives them the perception that they don’t fit in. This is of course sad but happens in every community be it Linux based or not, online or in the real world. The LUG personality is of course a function of the individual personalities. There’s no way any LUG can suit everyone, and whilst sad, there will always be some lossage in any LUG.

• Other routes
  People find other ways to get their fix of news, technical help and social interaction. Non-geographic distro-specific groups may call people away from their LUG as people align themselves with the distribution of choice. Some people will move to other mediums of communication such as IRC and web based forums. A degree of this lossage is inevitable, but often people will leave their LUG membership intact whilst they venture out into other primary methods of communication.

Regularity of meetings

Many LUGs have a defined date when they meet such as the “First Saturday of the month”, “Second Wednesday evening” where others have less regimented meeting schedules. Personally I believe that of those LUGs that are logistically able to meet up, those that have a regular meeting and stick to it are providing a better service to their membership and potential members alike than those LUGs that don’t. In addition a LUG that meets up with no external publicity, little preparation and no notification to the members is going to have relatively duff meetings compared to those LUGs that take a bit of time and effort into their meets.

It’s clear that real-world meetings allow much better social interaction than forums, mailing lists and IRC ever can. A meeting allows people to get to know other members of their shared community in 3D! (some members being slightly more than 3D than others).

It also makes for a great ‘in’ for joe-public. Let’s not think for a minute that a LUG is a clique of friends, it should be an open community for all. Anyone should be able to turn up to a meeting – subject to the usual considerations like physical space and safety. What better place for the new FLOSS user to meet other like minded individuals than in a community hall, office, pub, curry house, university or home.

Some LUGs find it difficult to get everyone together due to their broad geographic spread. To counter this problem some LUGs have alternating meeting locations. One month/week the meeting could cover one end of the region, the next could switch to another place. It’s surprising how far people will travel for a LUG meet, and often assistance can be found for those of a low income or with travel difficulties.

Money in the bank

Most LUGs have no finances at all. This can be a problem when a LUG needs to hire a venue to hold a meeting. I see nothing wrong in a LUG charging people to attend the meeting. A nominal fee of 2GBP or a concessionary rate of 1GBP for OAPs, students and those on low incomes really isn’t going to break the bank for most people once a month or so. This may even be enough to cover the cost of hiring avenue and leave a little over for other expenses. One popular LUG in the UK started charging the above nominal fee and now has enough money left over at the end of the year to buy a roll of tape to stick cables down! (actually it’s quite a few hundred pounds in the bank). Of course I’m not advocating LUGs becoming profit making ventures, but if one has some money in the bank and it can use that for the benefit of the members of the community then why not use it. Wouldn’t that be a good measure of a LUG, one that gives back to the community.

Website

How many hits does the LUG website get? Most LUGs in the UK probably don’t know this because it’s not something that lug.org.uk (who host many LUGs) publish, but that’s likely to change soon. Some LUGs have active sites with many technical articles posted. Others are simply a gateway to the LUG-proper with a page detailing the location, date and time of the next meeting. Some might argue that’s all a LUG needs as a web presence, and that the majority of LUG activity happens on the mailing list or IRC channel anyway. A strong web site however with plenty of content can give new users confidence that they are joining a bunch of committed individuals who like to share information in the spirit of free software.

Help the wider community

Does the LUG run infopoints, have stands at computer fairs or give out information and software in shopping centres? Does the LUG get out into the community and let people know that it is there? Some LUGs have members who are active doing exactly these thing on a regular basis. This is a fantastic way to get knowledge out to the community. Many non-LUG people have no clue LUGs exist. Most computer users don’t even know Linux and FLOSS exist. It’s at events like Infopoints and Software Freedom Day that the LUG communities can come together to show how great FLOSS is.

Longevity

To the LUGMasters, if what you’re doing is going well, keep doing it, if not, change. How do you know if it’s going well? Simple, ask the LUG members. I can’t remember the last time I saw a LUG master actually ask his/her membership what they wanted. Yes you could end up with a lengthy discussion which will ramble off topic and likely cause arguments here and there, but it gives a chance for people to be heard. People often want to feel they can contribute. They may not have the time to devote to attending meetings and/or infopoints, they may well have great ideas about how the LUG can be improved. Listen to them, they’re your members.

So that’s my rough measure of what makes a good LUG. Have I missed anything out? Very likely. I don’t know how every LUG works, some might be doing things I’ve never thought of.