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Notes from Wednesday's meeting



I feel guilty at missing the meetings last week and again tomorrow, and
therefore hereby relinquish any rights I might have had to be hurt if you
ignore my comments.

But just in case someone might be interested, here are some comments on last
week's minutes.

JABR wrote

>We held one of our volunteers meetings on Wed, Sep 25, at Pioneer
>Global in Boston.
>
>We discussed the activities of some of the other former BCS groups.
>A number of people have independently begun efforts to form a "new"
>BCS central umbrella group. It was my feeling that while such an
>effort has merit, our group must be able to survive on its own first,
>and it would be premature to expend our initial efforts on creating
>such a group. An umbrella organization can potentially ease some of 
>the resource constraints of a small group, but if the group's survival
>depends on the umbrella organization, I don't see much chance of 
>the group lasting long.

While recognising the benefits we gained from the BCS, I would be opposed to
trying to set up an umbrella group until the individual groups are
established, and able to hold their own against an umbrella organisation.
>From my observation of the notes posted to the e-services mailing list, it
appeared that the BCS's price for providing services was very high in terms
of the autonomy and funding that it took away from the individual groups, and
that this could well have contributed to its demise.  I think it would be
better to think of a service group, rather than an umbrella group.

>* Signs and flyers
>
>I regularly used the Resource Center in Waltham to prepare flyers and 
>signs for our meetings. I'm not sure what this would have cost, had I
>done it at a print shop.

I believe we could make signs ourselves - certainly on paper, and we coud
paste them onto pieces of card if we had to.  I'd be willing to try to help
here (including being reliable).

>* Meeting space
>
>MIT has provided BCS with free meeting space. As I understand it, our
>sponsors at MIT justified the BCS presence on campus as being of great 
>benefit to the MIT community. I'm not sure how this will translate down
>into the individual groups, now that BCS central is gone.

I would have thought that linux would also be of benefit to the MIT
community.  Are we friends with Richard Stallman at present?  There's
certainly quite a lot of synergy between us and the FSF.

>* Administrative overhead
>
>Running a group incurs a certain amount of administrative overhead.
>BCS central handled the administrative functions, freeing us to
>focus our efforts on the fun activities like meetings, Linux Cafes
>and BBQs, etc.

But evidently the BCS's costs were much too high for the benefit perceived by
the members.

>Above all, we have a clear need for more volunteers to be involved in
>the group's activities between meetings. I encourage everyone who's
>interested in keeping the group alive to come to the next few volunteer
>meetings.

I Really will try to come to the meeting next week if I'm in town.  You folks
who have been to all the meetings recently have made me feel very guilty.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Richard J. Royston                             AOI International Division
richard at aoi.ultranet.com                       Triple I Corporation
(508) 937-5400 x218 voice                      847 Rogers Street #1-LRC
(508) 453-5731 fax                             Lowell, MA 01852




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