Re: [SAGE] Starting a local sage group

[Philip Brown <phil@bolthole.com>]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2002 at 03:33:08PM -0500, J. Lasser wrote:
> ...
> Well, while I didn't start the Old Bay SAGE group in Baltimore, I have
> now run it pretty much single-handedly for about a year and a half, and
> was part of the ruling cabal for at least another year and a half.
>...

Your experiences were fairly similar to mine. The crucial thing, I think,
is to get that mailing list going. Or to have one already, and hijack it.
Muah-hahahaha...

A few minor differences:

I "secceeded" our area from a group that was a little too far for me :-)
There was a UNIX group meeting regularly in the next county over 
(Orange County, calif.), but I didnt like the drive from LA. One day, after
other people were whinging about "it's too far to drive" on the 
pre-existing mailing list, I decided to do something about it.

Funnily enough, there USED to be an LA group, but it 'died' a few years
back, IIRC.

With that in mind, I proceeded to cajole, finagle, (and bully in some
cases) a new meeting place and time.
[ST:TNG, the one where Beverly can hear Picard's thoughts, on
 WHY they are going left, not right ;   Because he just decided they
 were going to do that :-) ]

I made the first presentation, I ended up hosting the meeting in my
company-at-the-time's building, and I think we had a whopping 6 people
show up :-)

It was a little depressing for the first few months, but I kept at it. The
trick for us was in finding presenters in time for the next meeting.
But somehow, it kept going, only missing one month.
After 2 years we're now up to 40-50 people each meeting,
(after having changed location twice!) and thankfully, someone else has
taken the majority of the task of scheduling speakers upon himself.

We have almost never had an "outside" speaker. There arent any famous
admins in our area, and there are no dues, so no money to fly people in.
It is almost always done by a list member who wants to share the latest
CoolThing(tm)[*]

PS: I do NOT bribe people with food :-) However, we DO have a
regular post-meeting dinner. I was inspired by the post-meeting dinner
at BayLISA for that one.


PPS: http://www.bolthole.com/uuala/


[*] CoolThing(tm) MegaTokyo.com