forwarded message from RICHARD KESSLER

[Eric Zundel Ayers]

Richard Kessler wrote to the ale list asking for some info on our group
and I sent him the minutes from the organizational meeting.  Looks like
this is a flourishing user's group, although I expect more than 30
people at the ALE meetings.

I can forward this to the general ALE list if you think appropriate.

-Eric.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
 From: RICHARD.KESSLER at the-matrix.com (RICHARD KESSLER)
To: zundel at cc.gatech.edu
Subject: User Group Info
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 95 18:05:00 -0600

Eric,
.
Thank you for your reply with info about ALE and AUUG.
I will send a note to one of the AUUG folks as well, but
If you will give me your postal address, I'll send you
some background info on our group and some back copies
of newsletters.  Will also put you on the mailing list
for newsletters.  Am hoping to do the same for an AUUG
person.
.
I do not know how long our user group has been in existence.
I have been with them for 2 years, and am in my second
term as group secretary.  We have four officers,
president, treasurer, secretary, and programs director.
.
Meetings are held monthly (except for July) on the first
Tuesday of the month at 6:30pm.  They are now held in
the conference room of a large corporation, but were
previously held in a library meeting room.
We had almost 40 dues paying members last year, and are
in the middle of collecting dues for the next annual cycle.
Dues are basically  $25, with $15 for students and groups
of 3 or more.  We have a corporate sponsorship policy and
have just now suddenly had 4 companies ask to become
corporate sponsors (no checks yet).  The funds are used
for postage and cookies & cokes for the meetings. Although
we collect dues, we welcome visitors to the meetings and
don't do any arm twisting. I'd imagine someone could come
to all the meetings without paying dues and we'd not
say anything to them.
.
Here are some ideas of the types of activities and
speakers we've had :
.
- - a book review of Unix related books and magazines
- - publish a one page newsletter monthly, usually about a
  week before the next meeting.
- - publish a membership 'directory' annually.
- - affiliate membership with the National UniForum group.
- - bring in handouts, samples of interesting articles, mailings etc.
  to share with the group.
- - annual officer 'elections' are non-technical meeting, usually
  held at a local pizza house.
- - we are building a database of addresses (PCFile on a DOS box)
  to keep info to be used for the membership directory, and also
  to mail newsletters.  We have recelntly expanded this list
  by going through the yellow pages and calling every company
  listed under computers and getting their mailing address.
  We also went through about 6 months worth of employment
  adds in the newspaper to pick out any address that look like
  they involve unix or networking.  Early in Dec, we sent out
  about 280 flyers to these addresses.  This appears to have
  brought in some new faces for us.  We only spend money to
  mail newsletters every month to active members and a hundred
  or so 'hot prospects' - people we are trying to get to turn
  out for the meetings. The total size of the mailing list is
  up to 570+ addresses.
.
Example speakers :
- - computing soulutions at Samford University
- - use of Unix at Marvin's Building Materials
- - product line presentations from SUN, IBM, and Data General
representatives.
- - an intro session on 'grep.'
- - Xwindows programming,
- - Internet IP multicasting protocols,
- - Symetrical Multiprocessing,
- - The Matrix BBS (DOS) facilities,
- - Aerospace computing applications,
- - UAB CIS professor on various Unix topics.
- - Commercial Internet Access provider (company) presentation.
- - Linux 'panel' discussion group (very good meeting!).
.
The main concept for our group is simply to provide an opportunity
for people interested in Unix to get together and exchange info,
ideas, etc.  We don't have any special 'hooks' to draw people in,
or any special 'privilidges' like internet access. Amongst a core of
people close to the group, there seem to be a few things we are
pushing for. (1) grow the group membership : with 40 'active' members
and meeting attendance sometimes down to as little as 15 people,
we feel that larger number will add lots of dynamics to the group's
activities. (2) find activities/speakers that will draw in more
members, or (3) get a special 'hook' that will draw in people and
give a certain focus to the group (like special internet access).
We have only been able to work on 1 & 2 above.
.
Just for your info, there is a feeling that we may have been
too successful in the past with acquiring guest speakers.  Many
of the guest speakers have been very good, but also very time
consuming.  Thus, leaving little time on a weeknight for members
to mingle amongst themselves. We are talking about trying to
mix this up with other activities of a different format.
One example that succeeded very well was our last meeting.
We got 4 people to volunteer to be 'panel' members for
a discussion group on Linux.  The turn out was very good,
about 30 people for the meeting. The panel people talked
initially about 5 minutes each, then overhead questions started
going back and forth.  Excellent info was passed, and very
good participation by the audience.
.
Again, please send me a postal address and I'll get you
some hardcopy examples of the above.  Please let us know
what works or dosen't work for your group.  I and one
other person may be interested in traveling to ATL for
info sharing and to attend a meeting if it's agreeable
to everyone.
.
Our groups president is Dick Brooks, d.brooks at ieee.org
.
Thanks
.
richard.kessler at the-matrix.com
71051.1106 at compuserve.com
5188 Stonehaven Drive
Birmingham, AL  35244
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