[Lopsa-regional-project] Another local leader chimes in

[Adam S. Moskowitz]

As de facto leader of the second-oldest US-based "user group" (Back Bay
LISA, or BBLISA), let me offer a few thoughts . . .

BBLISA has its own domain, server, bandwidth, web site, and mailing
lists; we are considered to be enough a part of "The MIT (*) Community"
that they give us a meeting space at no cost. Unless we were to lose our
donated colo/bandwidth I can't see us giving up our server; I can't
imagine why we'd ever give up our domain.

We have no dues, no formal membership, no governing body, no officers,
no charter or by-laws, and we're not incorporated. We have no assets;
legally the domain belongs to one of our members, the server to another
member; both offer these for our use at their expense and out of the
goodness of their hearts.

We have 'formal" affiliations with SAGE, Boston User Groups (a local
"umbrella" group that provides nominal support to high-tech "user"
groups in the greater Boston area), and O'Reilly (the publisher). The
latter gets our members discounts, and gets the group plenty of free
books that we give away as door prizes at our meetings; the other two
don't help us much at all, but it doesn't cost us anything to be
affiliated with them nor does it hurt us in any way. We are happy to
consider other affiliations if appropriate.

So what would we like to get in terms of "support" from an organization
like LOPSA or USENIX? Primarily, money; specifically, money to cover the
expenses of a non-local speaker. In the past we have been lucky enough
to find speakers who were traveling to Boston for other reasons, and
who have been willing to extend their stay or time it to coincide with
our meeting. Some speakers have paid their own expenses, others have
used funds from their companies or universities that were available for
this sort of thing. Once, a few years ago, USENIX said they would
consider giving us a "grant" for this but the speaker couldn't make it
so it never happened.

It might be nice to have access to some sort of "speakers bureau," that
we could use to find people to speak at our meetings; on the other hand,
I don't know how much more useful that would be than just posting to the
various mailing lists.

When it comes to things like participating in events sponsored by groups
such as USENIX and LOPSA, well, for us it works like this: If someone
approaches us with an idea, we send an announcement or call for
volunteers or whatever to our membership; if one of our members wants to
get involved, then that member pretty much has free reign to do whatever
s/he thinks is appropriate; if no one responds, so be it. We will
announce such events at our meetings but that's about it. I don't mean
for it to sounds like we're not interested or hostile to such things,
but rather, we have no formal organization -- and we like it that way --
because it allows each person to put in only as much time and effort as
they want. If no one wants to put in the effort, well, that's the way it
goes.

As far as promoting LOPSA at our meetings: Most of the people who attend
our meetings already know about (and are probably members of) LOPSA (as
well as SAGE and/or USENIX). We usually make some sort of announcement
about "the state of LOPSA" but we don't concentrate on it and we
certainly don't dedicate whole meetings to it -- primarily because
that's not what our members want to hear. We do encourage our members to
visit the LOPSA web site and to consider joining (although I'm often
hard-pressed to say why they should join -- but I had the same problem
with SAGE). On the other hand, if enough people said "I'd come to a
meeting to learn more about LOPSA," we'd be happy to hold such a
meeting.

So there you have it. I've joined the lopsa-regional-project list and am
happy to answer any questions people might have.

AdamM



(*) Massachusetts Institute of Technology; http://www.mit.edu/