[kwlug-disc] Attendance

[Jason Eckert]

I'll echo Ron's comments. I like the fervor or in-person events, but online
has potential to grow attendance at a time when LUG attendance in general
is in decline.
I think the decline in attendance is due to the pandemic though. Times have
been changing for the last decade, and I saw WWITPRO go bust before the
pandemic. The biggest challenge for them was to get speakers, and this was
primarily due to reduced attendance and interest.

Times are a changin' - just take a look at how the open source development
community has changed these past 2 decades. Modern open source developers
don’t have the same hatred of closed source software companies (e.g.,
Microsoft) that defined early open source developers of the 1990s. When
Microsoft bought GitHub, most open source developers really didn’t care.
Instead, modern developers are more like YouTube content creators; they
care more about having good tools and a platform that promotes their work
to others than lofty open source principles and code freedom.

Similarly, LUGs served a vastly different purpose 2 decades ago (remember
installfests?).
So, I think the bigger issue to tackle is "how do we keep LUGs relevant and
engaging today?" I don't have a solution to offer, but I think it will need
to involve evaluating what needs are out there today and how a LUG can best
fulfill them. Likely, part of a successful solution will involve online as
well as some in-person events too.

My 2 cents :wq

On Wed, 5 Oct 2022 at 01:14, Ronald Barnes <ron at ronaldbarnes.ca> wrote:

> Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote on 2022-10-04 17:44:
>
> > I have noticed that our attendance is dropping.
>
> FWIW, SFLUG publishes subscriber counts: (excuse the bad formatting,
> blame Thunderbird!):
>
>
> > $ sf-lug_roster_stat
> >
> >
> > YYYY-MM-DD
> >
> > 2022-08-22 247
> >
> > ...
> >
> > 2015-01-22 328
>
>
> So, their numbers have been in slow decline too.
>
>
> But KWLUG is still the Gold Standard™ of LUGs, IMHO.  Largest (online)
> meetings. Most informative meetings. Most active mailing list.
>
>
>
>
> > I was expecting significantly more people for Doug's presentation
> > last month, for example. I think partially people are tired of
> > virtual meetings, and partially we have not been doing a good job of
> > publicizing the group,
> I think online has helped grow attendance since it's easier.
>
>
> If you figure out a way to publicize the group without paying Meetup.com
> money, let me know!
>
>
> I've tried Reddit and Twitter, don't think I got a single sign-up.
>
> Most LUGs I interact with skew towards older people and they're not
> active on social media.  Younger folks don't seem as interested or I
> can't find them.
>
>
> rb
>
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