William,

One cure (actually, an affordance) is to register the GTALUG on meetup.com, for visibility.

If I look at https://www.meetup.com/topics/linux/ca/on/toronto/ , I see "Toronto Linux Meetup" saying "over 50 interested". There's a target audience!

I had done this in 2009, for the systems sciences community (in preparation for the ISSS Waterloo meeting in 2010). The first year at meetup.com was free, and then they started charging for being on meetup.com. I didn't want to continue (as an individual) to pay for the registrations, so in subsequent years, restarted on Google Sites (at http://wiki.st-on.org/ ), with links to register on Eventbrite (which doesn't charge for free events).

I notice that IBM does have notifications on meetup.com , with a pointer to register elsewhere. As an example, see https://www.meetup.com/Toronto-IBM-Tech-Talks-Meetup/ , where the April 20 event says "In addition to RSVPing on Meetup here, please also register at the Eventbrite link".

As a new attendee to GTALUG events, I did a little extra searching to find the group. Right now, searching Google on "Linux Toronto Meetup" has GTALUG as the fifth hit on my list.

In the interest of longevity, it's great that GTALUG is on its own domain. In the interest of publicity, there's a large group of people who think meetup.com is the only place that advertises meetups.

P.S. I have also sent notifications to events@nowtoronto.com (see https://nowtoronto.com/contact ), which is free. This has picked up people who don't plan more than a day ahead.

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 9:21 PM, William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

There was no formal discussion with the GTALUG board. I just got tired
of talking about it and decided to show initiative. :-)

GTALUG has long ceased to be "users group" and has degenerated to social
get-together. Symptoms are
- It has stopped growing.
- No new idea or people are coming in.
- It's not doing anything, because the current people are already
expert in what they are doing, so no need to do anything.
- It's falling behind the time. There are people who knows Linux
and never heard about GTALUG. (I see this at work)

So, what's the cure? I think that structured tutorials is the best way
to hold on to people. "Linux Command-Line" is not the only topics.
There are many others, even from this mailing list alone.
--
William

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 06:40:47PM -0400, Gary via talk wrote:
> I will attend but I think it would be great if gtalug could get some
> visibility on this for the public at large. How might this be done.
> /gary
>
> On 17-07-22 11:17 PM, William Park via talk wrote:
> > Subject of "tutorial" comes up every year at Linux BBQ. This year, at
> > Hacklab, was no different. OK, I'll bite first.
> >
> > I will give a series of tutorials on "Linux Command-Line", starting with
> > - Shell (bash)
> > - Vi editor (vim)
> > It will be workshop style. So, you can bring laptop (Windows and
> > Chromebook), try out examples, and ask questions.
> >
> > How many are interested?
> > We'll work out the logistics later.
>

> ---
> Talk Mailing List
> talk@gtalug.org
> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
---
Talk Mailing List
talk@gtalug.org
https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk