[volunteers] offlist reply to : [SVLUG-Silicon-Valley-Linux-Users-Group] Venue for Silicon Valley Linux Users Group

[Rick Moen]

Quoting IrishMASMS (irishmasms at yahoo.com):

> Hey Kevin - Rick (CCed on this email) has been the great SVLUG corraller
> guy since I moved to the bay area; seems whoever purchased the Meetup
> dues let it expire. There is the July meeting scheduled, which I just
> forwarded to the list.
> 
> Hopefully you two can coordinate the tux love in Silicon Valley.


Hi there!  I'm also CCing Mark Weisler, the other guy who helps keep
SVLUG going.


The Meetup group was generously registered by longtime volunteer Tim
Utschig.  I gather that it must have been a year ago, and that Meetup
wants renewal money.  I wasn't actually aware of any of this, because I
personally don't use Meetup.

And, hey, Kevin, we'd be really delighted if you were able and willing
to renew the Meetup group and become its organiser.

About the Symantec venue:  It was originally negotiated for SVLUG by
then-President J. Paul Reed after a peevish Google employee named Warren
Turkal got our meeting space at a Google conference building cancelled.

Kevin, especially since 9/11 with South Bay companies getting very
restrictive with their public access to meeting space, it's been
extremely difficult to book good meeting space, especially for free,
without  significant amounts of inside influence.  You pretty much
always need to either provide serious funding, or have an inside
employee 'sponsor' at the company, or both.  In SVLUG's case, we have so
far arranged a series of inside Symantec-employee sponsors, finding new
ones when, occasionally, we get blindsided by our sponsor quitting or
being laid off.

In consequence, we tremendously appreciate people trying to 'find a
venue' for SVLUG _in case_ we lose Symantec, because it's an excellent
idea to have a backup plan.  We cannot help noticing that people new to
the problem space of 'public venue for a tech talk, can't provide funds,
can't be too obnoxious about security checkin, can't require us to have
event insurance, can't require us to be a 501(c)(3) charity, can't
rquire us to have in advance a sponsoring inside employee' frequently
underestimate the difficulty of negotiating a no-cost suitable venue.

Pretty much every newcomer who ponders the problem suggests Hacker Dojo.
As Kevin seems to have found out, there are strings attached to holding
any event at Hacker Dojo, including ones involving funding.

Suggestion:  SVLUG has a public mailing list for core volunteers to
discuss and arrange SVLUG's internal business, including meeting site
arrangement.  That would be the best place to discuss all of this, and
it would be good if you would join it.

http://lists.svlug.org/lists/listinfo/volunteers

I'm CCing that mailing list.