Imminent Death of BayLISA / July Board Meeting Invitation

[Roy S. Rapoport]

This is a very important topic.  I'll ... get around to responding to it.
Maybe next month ... :)

On Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 12:09:41PM -0700, Strata R Chalup wrote:
[deleted]

It seems that BayLISA's trouble symptoms could be summarized as:
1. Lack of active interest from board members (I use 'active interest' to
mean "I know y'all care a lot and would love to put in time; the actual
interface to you seems to show you not doing so"); 
2. Lack of active interest from current members (who don't show up for
meetings); 
3. Lack of active interest from potential members (who don't sign up)
4. [inferred] Lack of active interest from people who might make a
presentation

Are any of these more critical or leading to the others? What would happen
if member ranks expanded by 1000%? What would happen if, instead, meeting
membership expanded by 1000%? What if Sergey Brin said "hey, I'd like to do
a presentation on this little company I'm running and what we're doing"?

> handing its meager assets off to some other nonprofit, and our tape
> library off to the Computer History Museum.

Err, could we perhaps start with migrating the tape library to some other
medium that's more late-20th-century? Say, VCD or DVD? VCD has the
advantage of being dirt cheap to duplicate.

> So?  BayLISA or no BayLISA?

BayLISA! BayLISA! And one of these days, I really will make it to a
meeting! :)

For me, the biggest impediment to coming to meetings has been finding
someone to go with.  I like going to the meetings alone about as much as I
like going to the movies alone, or to dinner.  I got involved in BayLISA
because I was working for Alberto and he went pretty much every time,
taking me with him; lately, I'd been having something of a problem getting
any of my sysadmin friends to go.  

It's also a location thing, really -- living in Brisbane, it's felt a
little far to go.  If I'm very, very, very lucky and good, it's possible my
next job (I'm going through the interview cycle now) will be in Mountain
View, and I suspect it'll be easier to make it.  

And of course, the membership thing follows the attendance thing -- I was a
member for a year, I seem to recall, but afterward looked back and decided
that maybe paying $35 and going once in that year was ... an unfortunate
cost/benefit ratio :)

-roy