Re: Formal Member Registration

[Atul Chitnis <achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 29 May 2000, Syed Khader Vali wrote:

> But my only question here is what in case we have relatively more
> number of walk-ins than members ? Then what do we tell the caterers or
> whoever ?

The word "plan" (as in "being prepared for") implies that one
knows/guesses ahead, and uses this information to amke sure that things go
well. My other suggestion was also straight-forward:

a) Walk-ins pay for themselves (unless that meet's sponsor agrees to pay
for them).  They would have an option of registering as formal LUG members
at the meet, so that they are counted the next time.

b) Caterers typically can handle upto 20% higher load than predicted, and
given an hour's lead time, can rustle up more stuff (which is what they
did last Saturday). But they are very unhappy about scenes like this, and
there are *no* guarantees that they can do it everytime. God help us if
there is a major event taking place at the venue at the same time!

>     Atul> At Bang!inux, we had no way of telling the organisers who
>     Atul> our members were and how they could be identified -
>     Atul> resulting in us not being able to arrange for LUG members to
>     Atul> attend some of the sessions.
> 
> Was there a chance like that ? Then I guess I will the first to
> register :-)

Yes, there was a chance, and we muffed it. All of us who were involved in
the planning felt miserable about it.

>     Atul> Last year, at IT.COM, we also had no formal way of
>     Atul> identifying members, resulting in cheapskates trying to pass
>     Atul> themselves off as Linux India members in order to bypass the
>     Atul> gate-fee for the exhibition.
> 
> And one who were really volunteering had to wait for hours together
> outside because there was no way of identification that they were
> from the LUG ( which included me :-( So I guess again I will be first
> for the membership in that case :-)

Good supporting point. Because of the lack of any formal
identification/accreditation, genuine members had to suffer.

As Linux India grows (and it will), other LUGs are going to face similar
issues. What I am trying to do is to set up a prototype that can be
emulated elsewhere (and suitably modified if required, based on
success/failure). 

The current style of doing things ("let it just be a list") has resulted
in fragmentation, alienation and loss of benefits to members, and is
slowly beginning to eat into the potential that Linux India holds in
changing our country's IT mentality.

Atul

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