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Obtaining Guest Speakers For Users Groups?
sdweber asks: "I am the president of the LUG here at Lehigh University. Many members of the group have expressed an interest in having a guest speaker or speakers come in and talk about Linux, Open Source, or other geek-friendly topics. Looking for a good speaker, however, is proving harder than I thought. There are a few big names that come to mind quickly (ESR, RMS, and others) but beyond that I'm not sure where to look. Has anyone had a good/bad experience with guest speakers? Who are some good people to chase down? Of course, being college students, we don't have a whole lot of money to offer the speaker, but there are plenty of interested listeners eager to learn. Any suggestions?"
A good place that I tried to look for speakers when I was a college LUG president was career fairs. Hunt down Sun, SGI, IBM, etc... and see if they're willing to come talk to your group. They usually are and usually free as well. Remember to mention that you have seniors that are looking for jobs.
I have always enjoyed listening to: Guy Kawasaki, Randall Scwartz and Larry Wall, in no particular order.
I am a member of the LUG here at Penn State University and tonight we have our first speaker of the semester. Jeff Raven is speaking tonight, co-author of Blackbox Window Manager. I will let you know how it goes if I am able to attend. Michael
anyone that refers to themselves with 3 letter abbreviations (RMS for example) are usually good about talking about geeky topics...
.sigs??
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Of course, Natalie Portman's career doesn't seem terribly active right now.
t
Since cost is an issue, maybe some of the big wigs in the opensource field can have webcasts to your college... It'd probably still cost just for their time, but it'd be easier on everyone involved IMHO.
Don't get Linus Torvalds as a keynote speaker. He's a busy man, he has a terrible accent (you hear his voice when testing your soundcard driver), and the price of getting him as a keynote speaker would be enormous.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I dont think money is an important factor here. If people wanted to make money just for an appearance the probably wouldn't be involved with Open Source/Free Software. .com rush. So I guess just the minimum amount of money would be needed and I am sure there are plenty of people who would love to have the opportunity to talk to college students. After all students are the future and are going to decide where we go tomorrow (unlike MS which decides where we want to go today;).
However I guess its just courtsey to not make those people pay for lodging/transportation costs as lets face it... not everyone made money in the
When I checked ESR asks only that you pay for his trip, not his speaking time. This may work out better than many other speakers. Alternatively, you could consult with another local professional society (ala ACM) who get money to pay for guest speakers, etc.
I realize that many professors are idiots, and most won't be able to speak in a manner that is relevant to the users' group, but there are people on campuses who can at least spark more of a discussion. Plus, many of the knowledgeable professors will point you towards the "Celebrities" and provide schedules of when they might show up.
Don't discount the resources you already have!
I'm president of a small LUG, myself. Our meetings have generally been small social occasions to get together, drink beer and eat, and just have open-floor discussions. Now that we're ready to start growing, I've wondered about ideas to help draw people to meetings, and guest speakers were one idea under consideration. That and LAN parties. ;)
Perhaps getting people who use linux locally, like ISP admins, and local coders or programmers... and perhaps even the occasional opposing point of view, like someone from a Microshaft Certified Solution provider to get their opinion on things like samba, and Win/Unix integration...
There are two major products that come out of Berkel
I'm up here in Minot, ND let me know if interested! :-)
I'll post the outline if anyone's interested.
--------
get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
A couple of days ago Donald Becker spoke here in
Linkoping, Sweden. He spoke about Beowulf clusters
and Linux networking. The talk was both extremly
interesting and funny, and there was a great
questions and answers session after the talk.
A lot of credits to Donald for giving a wonderful
talk which was appreciated by a lot of people.
Also a lot of credits to http://www.lysator.liu.se
and http://www.nsc.liu.se for organizing the talk.
See http://www.scyld.com for more information
about Beowulf clusters and Linux network drivers.
Fredrik Henbjork
http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se
Scott, I go to Muhelnberg College (right down the road) and we too are struggling to get speakers. My thought is that a few schools (like us LVAIC schools) should combine forces such that we have more power to make speakers want to come. Muhlenberg has around 20 CS majors total, so we are not very attractive to come speak at, but Muhlenberg, Lafeyette, Lehigh, Moravian, etc all got together, you would be surprised how much better response would be.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
Try local reps depending on who they are, they can be 'geek-friendly'. Or visiting profs doing research. There's almost always cool stuff going on at universities that nobody knows about.
For small organizations (i.e., under 25 full-time staff people), you can probably contact the proposed speaker directly. You might have to go through a secretary: Be courteous and follow their rules. The speakers will probably make arrangements themselves.
Organizations of 25-75 people often have a dedicated Public Relations Manager to handle such things: Ask for them. They in turn might send you to a freelancer or small agency, who'll make the arrangements.
With companies of this size and bigger, they probably won't be interested unless:
- You can deliver audience members who are in their target markets
- You can deliver large, high-profile audiences ("opinion leaders"), and/or
- The talk is convenient for them.
In short, you'll have a hard time getting someone to get on a plane to appear before your 20-member User's Group.Finally, for bigger organizations (75+ full-time staff), you may have to deal with the organization's P.R. firm. Go to their Web site, look under the "About us" button, then to the "Press" section. If they don't list a press contact, look for contact names and numbers on press releases.
Don't be discouraged if they turn you down, and feel free to pester them if they don't return your emails and phone calls within a week. Good luck!
--Tom Geller
President, Bandwidth P.R.
Tom Geller
I am sorry, but why do you need a guest speaker? To inspire you? When was the last time you got inspired by a speaker? What was the result of such inspiration? As surprising as it may, I don't believe your group needs a guest speaker. I believe that whatever you are seeking can come from inside, I challenge you to take control, to do something for the group that they will not have expected, or to do something that the group has never done. You really don't need Linus or ESR or RMS to come down and talk to you. What you need is the "next linus" to spring up to life, Linus was not a next anyone, he took action that he felt necessary, you ought to do that. Good luck. Cheers
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I know that my company hires people to do linux, as we are onsite support for RedHat. Hence, we give tech talks concerning all sorts of different stuff. Recently, Curtis Preston gave a talk in Boston concerning Backup Recovery practices. I know with all the linux people within the company, we could dig someone out to talk about the place of open source systems in the corporate environment.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I second the professor suggestion. If you can find a tinkerer they tend to have cool things to share, at least that was the case in the physics dept at Connecticut College. Also in WLUG (Worcester, MA LUG), we have our members speak about projects they're currently hacking. Such presentations are great if you can't find a speaker for a particular meeting.
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Perhaps Gore would like to talk about how he created the internet.
This is an important subject. I had a passing interest in Linux for years, but ESR spoke at my LUG(My first meeting). Although he was quite stricken with the Flu at the time it was definatly an eye opener and probably the reason my interest moved into actually using linux as an os and not a toy.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
Yes it is tough to get good speakers! Here at Purdue we have had Ian Malcolm, Richard Lynch of Zend Technologies, Wesley Chung (helped write rocket mail and yahoo mail) amoung others. A lot of our speakers are students/members that have a lot of know-how in different areas, from Perl/Tk to Booting a diskless machine.
Of course we have had our dissapointments with speakers. We have been contacting RedHat lately with no luck, and then we find out that the Purdue Networking Engineering Organization got the CEO of Redhat to come next month! Well balls! Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
My best Advice is to keep contacting the speakers whom you wish to have come out, don't give up.. Of course it also helps to have lots of numbers, that is a lot of people who will come to the presentation.
Quid rides ignare?
To get speakers, you need members. Speakers don't generally want to come to talk to the 5 guys who live in your dorm and run Linux.
And how do you get members? Basic common courtesy. Pardon me while I go on a rant for a moment: I've only lived in my area for a year so I don't know a lot of people. Last night, I went to a LUG meeting that was a complete disaster (from my point of view). I show up and sit down at the table (dinner first, then speaker). No one asks me my name, no one tells me their name, no one has name tags, no one explains what's going on (even as simple as "once everyone gets here we'll do introductions, etc"). We sit around and try to hear one another over the noise for 30 minutes and then order dinner. Again, no explanation of how we are going to be paying, etc. We eat. At 7:00 we go upstairs and participate in much unexplained activity (handing out tickets for what turned out to be a raffle later, making in-jokes, etc). Speak for a while and then out.
If all I wanted a LUG for was technical information, I'd browse a website on the same topic and save myself the drive and price of dinner. I want a LUG to be a social group--talk about Linux issues, make local connections, etc. I know I wasn't the only new person there because I saw one or two one-off intros going on--but no concerted effort to make people welcome. I felt like I was attending a stranger's wedding.
I'm not a total socio-phobe myself--I was looking alert and interested in conversations, making eye-contact and even contributing comments. But only two people bothered to even ask my name and I'm pretty sure one of them was a new guy. Sure, I could ask names first--but shouldn't it be the function of the LUG to make visitors welcome and not the other way around?
(As a sidenote, why is there always one of those smart-alecky geeks with the nervous sniff and inability to shut up when he is wrong in any group of computerphiles? Somebody smack those idiots.)
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
He's a terrific guy with a great perspective and an engaging presenter. Oh yeah, and I agree w/his perspective.;)
Hey democracy lovers, add Quorum as a c
RMS spoke at Utah State University last month and when I talked to him he said he made it a policy to speak to any GNU/Linux club that asked him to speak. However be careful they were giving away free books when RMS walked in to begin his lecture and he let them know that was not appropiate since they were not truly free. Also OpenLinux was being distrubuted at a table and he made them take it off because there was no snail mail address to write to for the code which is in violation of the GPL. But he did give a great talk similiar to the one that can be found in "Open Sources" All he asked was that his trip expenses were paid for.
4 weeks ago Alan Cox spend a weekend i Denmark and Sweden giving talks in Stockholm and Lund to the local LUG
he speeks very well!
Although the URL now redirects to linuxjournal, www.linuxresources.com used to maintain a list of people who could/would speak on Linux subjects. I notice in the table of contents that it's still there under the new ownership.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Quotes from A Man for All Seasons
1) He's a good speaker, I've heard him talk.
2) He professes to really enjoy speaking to User Groups.
3) His current job is supposably devoted to advocacy.
4) Red Hat has plenty of good reasons to want to speak to college age geeks.
5) They probably have the cash to not require too much out of your group.
Just a few thoughts.
-Quiller
As for the LULUG, eastern Pennsylvania. . .well, here's a hint: ESR is within an hour's drive of you. . . .
Sal, Lehigh Class of '83
I found for guest speakers alot of companies are willing to send people to do general presention. Also use your members as resource for speakers they have alot of knowledge to share.
Believe it or not, given the recent Linux/GNU explosion over the last few years, RMS and his new found fame still find time to visit some lower key places.
I go the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and it is the Computer Science nerve centre (yes, that's "re" up here in Igloo-land) of Canada, and one of the major schools in North America. But RMS didn't come here, he went to the small affiliated College across the creek to speak, literally.
There couldn't have been more than 150 people in the medium-sized room that he spoke in, and I don't imagine the College had a lot of offer him.
That being said, I'm not sure how the school got in touch with him, but it shows that you don't need to pack several thousand people in a metropolitan convention center to get some big names to speak to you.
A lot of these guys will jump at the opportunity to make their message heard in person. It might have something to do with altruistic motives, as opposed to corporate ones.
"There is no knowledge that is not power"
He gave an interesting presentation... especially about open sourcing BSD when he was there, "the machine is the manual / the network is the machine", his theories on nanotech nightmares and so on.
He was a clever, spirited guy with an offbeat sense of humor... and he had a lot of good stories, plus was quick on his feet in the question and answer. Very energetic and interesting.
I also figure that Neal Stephenson's views on anything have to be fun... although maybe he's not an "open source" guy in the strictest sense, I bet he'd be a popular draw. I never seen him speak though.
Sorry, sorry!!!
I have microsoft on the brain... no doubt he is wondering why he suddenly got a case of the goosebumps right now...
sorry Bill... heh...
Back in the early '90s my local Atari (8 bit) users group got a guest speaker.
We had to decide who we wanted to speak, raise money to pay his hotel and transportation, and we even went and rented a more expensive hotel banquet room. Some memembers took the guy out for meals.
It went off rather well, I remember walking into the hotel, and seeing on their comptuer monitor "Space: talk by jon doe" (I can't remember the guy's name, but Space is/was the St. Paul Atari Users Group) The guy spoke for half an hour (very few people should be allowed to speak for longer!) with questions following.
One other point, keep your speaker busy, but not too busy. For instance if I was to bring Alan Cox in to my hometown I'd have to consider the 8 hour time difference. Somehow we would have to give him time adjust. Then various activities. Some time should be spent with users (In Alan's case your probably ahve a kernel hacker with an interesting problem!). Also plan time for other things. Someone should take him to the local zoo, or a similear activity so he doesn't get burned out. Don't forget time to exercise and time alone!
Do you want to invite family? Linus is much more likely to want to speak in Norway if you fly his wife and kid out too, and give them plenty of time to travel to Finland.
Overall guest speakers are a lot of fun, and well worth doing. however they are expensive (More so if you have to pay the speaker and not just the travel expenses) and a lot of work. Don't try to do more then one or two a year, and don't let those who orginize it get bruned out.
I mailed the FSF about having a guest speaker for our student ACM chapter at the university. Much to my suprise RMS volunteered for the duty, as he was going to be speaking in Vancouver, BC around that time (which being only 2000 miles away is practically next door). If he's not in your area or arranging a tour he may request that someone else speak. His only requirements are that his travel cost be covered and he is taken out to a good dinner during his stay. (Beer and pizza is not an option, since he disdains both). The trip up here he actually stayed in my house, and was a gracious enough guest not to flay me for my non-free faux pas (such as having a prominent O'Reilly shelf in the living room). But, do expect to be challenged on any logical inconsitencies in any statement you may make, no matter how trifling they may seem to you. And be prepared for the anagram puns and spontaneous Bulgarian dancing in the living room. The actual speech ran somewhat long, about his AI lab days and the evolution to the GNU project, and the four principles of freedom. But it was informative if you could pay attention so long as that. There are transcripts of his speeches out there which give the general notion of what he will talk about. In general, a little research to find out who's in your area will reveal some notables in the free software community who might likely speak (excepting Alaska where you better be able to cough up the $800 airfare since the "local area" means Vancouver or Seattle).
His name was Robert Paulsen.
Even if all they do is tell their story, you will probably learn from it, as long as they can speak decently enough. I've never heard a firsthand account of the whole Open Source development process from someone who worked on a project not as formal as the Linux kernel, but which still required some kind of "team". I'd like to hear how it got started, how the others got involved, how they interact, and what problems they encounter. Then I'd like to ask questions. Anybody wanna come to Rutgers and do this?
grep -ri 'should work'
I remember reading from ESR's page that he'll speak for free just about anywhere as long as someone puts him up somewhere (preferably somewhere that doesn't suck, even a guest bedroom would be perfect). Just think, you could have ESR sleeping in your house! ;)
And he doesn't like to fly coach on long flights, but you shouldn't have that problem as he lives in Pennsylvania, fairly close to the Lehigh Valley area if I am not mistaken.
But if you're going to have anyone speak, you gotta get ESR.
And maybe you can invite RMS, but only to kill him when he gets there. =)
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
At a company I used to work for, a senior developer had just quit, and was giving "brain dump" talks to any who would listen. I honestly didn't attend these sessions intending to be inspired. But I was inspired. Not by any dynamic speaking quality, but by his sheer depth of knowledge of the stuff he had coded and his insights on programming in general. This speaker just had great subject matter, was enthused and knew what he was talking about. I would bet that there are a lot of people around like this, you've just got to find them. And I think listening to people like this is interesting and could be inspirational. Sure the group should have seperate activities, but a healthy balance of activities and speakers would be preferable in my opinion.
Hehe you get involved in one little book project and suddenly find yourself interesting.
Seriously, though, I love to make myself available to user groups when travelling, like I did when I came down here to Dallas in May for a friend's wedding (the fact that I found a job here and wound up moving back is another story). I suspect most authors, open-source-project-leaders, et al have similar attitudes: catch me when I happen to be in Pennsylvania (or wherever), and I'd love to give a presentation.
OF course, that makes it incumbent upon us (as potential speakers) to publicize our travel plans, a la Randal Schwartz -- something I'm guilty of neglecting myself, and I should probably get around to updating. Taking it a step further though, that makes for a lot of work on the part of the program chair of a user group: you still have to wade through all of the homepages of each potential speaker until you find one who will happen to be in the neighborhood. Perhaps someone would like to undertake building a "Random Sightings" website where people who wouldn't mind giving talks while travelling could enter their travel info into a database (and prog chairs could subsequently browse the same)?
MOO;IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
Inspiration isn't the only reason to have a guest speaker. Small groups have the problem that they tend to become homogenous and do things the same way. A guest speaker brings other perspectives, other experiences, new ways of doing things.
1. Contact Linux vendors (Redhat, Caldera, etc.). When I lived in Nashville, TN, we had representatives from Redhat at one of our Nashvile Linux Users' Group meetings and we had Caldera representatives at one of our Central Indiana Linux Users' Group meetings here in Indianapolis
2. Contact local Linux companies. Fortunately for us in Indianapolis, Ian Murdock (founder of Debian), works here in Indianapolis (he's President of Progeny Linux Systems)
3. Contact Linux developers within a few hours travelling distance. NLUG collected money to bring a window manager developer to Nashville from Alabama.
4. University community - Scores of students at my university were Linux users and probably would love to give presentations on their areas of expertise. Perhaps your campus has a similar concentration of Linux users.
The North Texas LUG had the president of Loki speak, Scott 'somebody' sorry, no offense, I have
'CRS'! A great presentation, and who would admit
to NOT liking games!
Having hosted RMS, he expects that his lodging, meals, and transportation will be paid expenses, in addition to a speaker's fee (that's how he earns his living, for the most part).
However, he adjusts his fee to the economic means of his host and is willing (and appears to prefer) to have someone put him up for a night rather than incur the expense of a hotel room (though he is alergic to cats).
In short, if he's in your city anyway, and you're willing to put him up, it would probably not be a great expense to have him speak. I would reccomend though, that you permit him to collect donations for the FSF, or sell FSF wares if you can't come up with a reasonable (say $500) speaker's fee.
He is not as unreasonable as his reputation makes him out to be, is a great speaker, and can be contacted by email (Check the GNU website for an email address).
For the tech group, we invited people from Microsoft, but warned them that they will be shreded if they only brought marketing types.
We also provided Microsoft with a pool of beta people (when beta really meant beta). We had the founders NuMega, but had a little debugging tutorial first. We had the president of Knowledge Dynamics (Install Pro) give a presentation on compression. This included a presentation on his new technique which was to be included in the next version of the product.
You can expect some marketing, but you must let them know what is expected. They will also want to know the demographics of the group.
Fight Spammers!
Alow myself to introduce myself... I am a LuFOG webmaster and cofounder. Last year when starting this group we found that the thing that drew the most people were speakers (Joe Aruda - VA, ESR).
Now LuFOG has lost a little steam and were looking to charge it back up. We tried having internal people speak and well... I have as much inflection as Ben Stein, so that didn't work out. Joe was a pretty good speaker (he better be if he wants to do sales) and ESR was very good (and we got credit for Software Engr. class for attending). We want more, not just for us but for the university to get exposure.
BTW we can indeed lobby for money if the speaker is worth it. I don't want us to sound to poor because were not, we just have to beg for what we have.
Aron
What about looking through list of speakers at conferences like Apachecon? Those are people whao like to talk and you can get some background info from the *con sites....
...remember good 'ol times when IP used to mean Internet Protocol....
As Executive Vice-President of the University of Alabama in Huntsville's Student Government Association (*waves to all the UAH /.ers*), I'd give you this to-do list:
Remember, just ask a poor, tired SGA EVP if ya need some help.
--
-- Geof F. Morris
I was surprised to find three women at last night's meeting but unsurprised to find that one was the non-technical friend of one of the others. Each of those two was 10 times more social than any other person (including the remaining woman). Unfortunately they were sitting too far during both dinner and presentation for me to talk to them much (and no, I wasn't going to hit on them).
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Look at one of last years Linux Journal issues (or was it Linux Magazine?). They had a list of the top 100 most influential open source people. You may want to contact a few of them. Some may even be in your neck of the woods. Western PA should have a fair supply of open source developers and beowolf people.
01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01010011 01001001 010
I have been speaking to developer audiences all over the world for the past 4 years, along with many colleagues from Sun. Yes, we're pro-Java, but we're also kin to the Open Source movement, respectful of Linux and eager to promote a bevy of open Internet-related technologies which beneficial us all. College audiences are especially enJoyable for us. If you'd like to arrange a visit, write me.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Aurther C. Clarke
As Treasurer of the Bucknell University ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), myself and the other officers help to persuade industry, faculty, and students computer experts or evangelists to (of OOP, OSS, Linux, etc) come to Bucknell to give a presentation. In the past year or so, we've had guests like Dan Quinlan of Transmeta, speaking on the Linux Standards Base, Ralph Droms (inventor of DHCP), a faculty member at Bucknell, John 'Maddog' Hall (Linux International executive director) on the Flexibility of the Linux OS, and many others. Currently, Eric S. Raymond has added us to his mailing list and will probably come Spring semester to talk about his ideals and beliefs when it comes to software.
What are our methods of obtaining guests? First, it helps to have some connections with someone related to the person you'd like a have speak at your school. Second, being at a top-notch college like Bucknell University tends to give some incentive, perhaps, for people to visit. Finally, persistance does pay off occassionally; if there's someone you really want, make sure you remind them via email or vmail every so often that you'd be absolutely delighted to have them grace you with their presence ;-D
Good luck!
______________________________
Eric Krout
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I was at the MIT talk that Rob gave, and Hemos happened to show up for. It was lots of fun, they answered questions for about an hour. I don't know the details of it, but I highly recommend Rob as a speaker. Unfortunately, he doesn't speak very often.
Those who don't know me, probably shouldn't trust me. Those that do know me, DEFINITELY shouldn't trust me.
I saw Marcus Ranum speak at the Atlanta Linux Showcase on intrusion detection systems. He's an excellent speaker stayed vendor neutral and has tons of cool stories yet the security community hates him.
I'm involved with an college internet society and have found that local technical companies are often approachable about sponsoring events. For instance I'm sure that a local web design company would be interested in giving a contribution to a talk involving a popular web designer. Given that the crowd would probably contain budding/experienced designers, promoting thier brand name might get them some workers.
We had ESR at our local LUG meeting a few months back, unfortunately, I couldnt make it, but I hear he was quite a good speaker. At an install-fest about a month ago, we had a Corel rep show up to help out. How did we get him? one of the guys met him in line at Fried Electronics. Go Figure...
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
I see both sides of the issue. IMHO whether or not OS is right for a project depends on a number of different varibles.
However, it is hard to predict which project is which, and like pyscho-history the acts of an individual can skew predictions. In other words you never know til you try.
--------
get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
I'm from Bethlehem, right near Lehigh, and while I won't pretend I'm anyone like ESR or RMS, I was asked by the Lehigh LUG to come speak last year. It would have been great because I could have stayed with my family and visited while on some company business.
/me shrugs. I suggest emailing your prospective speakers as a useful way of getting them interested/to show up :)
Unfortunately, the fellow from the LUG who emailed me never replied to my followup.
m.
Loki Software, Inc.
"Sebastian you're in a mess. They called you King of all the Hipsters, is it true or are you still the Queen?" -- B
Saw Kent Beck speak on eXtreme Programming at the Seattle Java Users Group (seajug.org), in cooperation with the Seattle Smalltalk Users Group. He was a great speaker, did a great job of keeping the audiences attention. Then had questions and answers, during which he proved to be both quick on his feet and a generally nice guy. Noteablye, he did an excellant job of handling the attitude that is pervasive in the programming community (not excluding myself from that characterization).
All around a great lecture, would recommend him to any UG, even though he is not directly a speaker about Linux.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Appearing with him was Bruce Schneier (of Counterpane fame) who also discussed the Cryptonomicon appendix about encryption; he seemed like a really nice, uber-hacker kinda guy. If you're interested in security, etc. I say get Bruce!
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire
But the bottom line is to go to the site, look around, and start asking people.
I was involved with a local ACM chapter and LUG who co-sponsored an event (not in an official capacity, so I do not represent the views of either). We had several speakers, but ESR was the "draw". We had a tiny budget going into it, but did just have enough to fly ESR in and out. All the arrangements with ESR were finalized many months in advance.
As is the tradition, we decided to try to sell T-Shirts to help pay for things. I paid for these out of my own pocket. More on this later.
I happened to be the person with a car who had the lightest schedule that day (I'd only have to miss one class to pick him up), so as soon as my class was out I picked up the person who had arranged ESR's visit and we drove the 80 miles to the airport as quickly as possible.
When we got to the airport, we searched the airport from top to bottom. No ESR. We talked to a series of airline employees trying to find out if they had any idea what happened to him. About an hour after we got to the airport we finally got someone to tell us that he never got on the plane. After more inquiry to see if he had for some reason switched flights (he didn't) and after checking voice mail to see if he had let us know he wouldn't be there (he didn't) we drove home.
Then I spent about an hour trying to get him on the phone. Here's a little tidbit: most people who answer phones at VALinux don't even know who he is, and those who do don't have ANY idea how to get in touch with him.
I finally gave up and went to class. Later (much later) that afternoon, we finally got an email from him. His explanation was that he "forgot", but that if we would buy another ticket for him he still MIGHT be able to make it. This was about 16 hours before the symposium was scheduled to start. Even if we could have gotten tickets at that point, we wouldn't be able to afford them.
Being the honest people we are, we notified everyone that ESR would in fact not be attending. As a result, there are still 90 T-Shirts left over (anyone want to buy one?).
[Luckily, another person involved in the event (thanks Andy!) got a hold of someone to fill in (who did a great job), which combined with the rest of the talks we had made a great conference.]
Only pay for his trip, eh? Let's see:
Plane tickets: $350
T-Shirts: $400 - $100 for the t-shirts we actually sold
Other: ~$150
PLUS at least two people wasting 10 hours combined just on ESR arrangements.
What did we get? Not a damn thing. I'm still out $400.
Thanks a lot ESR.
I've made it very clear that my Just another convicted Perl hacker talk is available to anyone who can get a group together expecting 20-ish or more, with a suggested donation of any increased travel cost I incur. And since I'm always bouncing around the country anyway, the additional costs are often near nothing.
It makes things real simple if your group meets on a regular basis, that way we can work with people
to schedule meetings in a sort of road trip format. Regardless of size or scheduling, we're
always willing to try and work out visits whenever we can.
The best way to contact us is via email to community@valinux.com
--Kit
Director of Community Projects
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
Shouldn't it be:
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and BSD. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
The Lexington Perl Mongers had a nice advantage, as we worked for different companies. Once in a while, Lexmark would bring out Nat Torkington (to talk? teach? not sure what the deal was), and we'd move our monthly meetings to concide with when he'd be in town.
We'd still have our planned speaker for meeting [talking about some random module / feature], but Nat also gave us a small talk about as to what was going on with Perl and showed us pictures of his kid, and all it cost us was keeping him in beer for the night.
If you increase your members, and they're varied [work for different companies, go to different schools, etc], you have a better chance of knowing when someone's going to be in the area anyway, and snagging them to come give a talk.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Try contacting alumni of your college. During my college years we occasionally had an alumni come in to speak. They're usually very happy to come back. They won't be the big draw RMS would be, but they'll probably do it for free, and they're not likely to stand you up (see the ESR post above).
I wonder why you're searching for "some" guest speaker. How badly organised must a LUG be if it doesn't have any topics to talk about?
.. and then simply join the mailing lists and news groups on that subject and ask if there's someone near your university who's able to speak about it.
I'd say, just make some meetings about OpenSource projects, ideas or geek-friendly stuff
It's hard to find something when you don't know what you're searching.
Armin.
I have a baby at home and in general try to only take a trip once a month. I have recently had to turn down a user group, well in advance of the event, simply because my schedule got too tight.
I look with especial kindness upon speaking engagements that are willing to pay for my wife and child to come with me, and will in general go out of my way to give them more than one talk, etc. If we can do a bit of sightseeing around the thing, it becomes something fun rather than another out-and-back trip with me missing the travel days away from my family.
I always show up. Always. That's pretty basic responsibility, but some people get that wrong and make us look bad.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
How do you get people interested in coming? We even had a booth at our local fair for the last 2 years, but interest never comes around. There is even a MajoDomo list running for the LUG, but the only thing ever posted is stuff like "Hey I signed this thing at the fair, what is this and how do I get off this list?"
One big problem we've had is the people trying to run things. They always seem too busy, and I would love to take over and start meetings, but where do you find a place to meet, and who do you ask? Like what would be a good starting point?
Another problem we'ver suffered from, in the area of lack of interest, is that the people we do get together are either newbies who've never even seen Linux or people who use it daily. It's very hard to find common ground, and to find topics that are interesting to everyone to talk about. And I would also like to do projects within the LUG, but ideas are something we have trouble with mostly because of a large lack of funding. With so few people, and especially so few dedicated, even purchasing web space or anything becomes the weight on only one or two peoples shoulders, there's no projects that spark any interest in the group as a whole to make us just that, a group.
A month ago I was visiting a nearby city, even smaller than my city, but they have a large mall, so I drove the 1.5 hrs to get there. When I got there I was pretty amazed to see that they had a LUG and it met every week! I'm almost to the point of just packing up and going down there every week or two to sit in with their LUG. Is this a normal thing? How far do others go to be with their LUG?
Please don't think this is a troll, and I don't even care if it gets mod'd down. What I would appreciate is some replys to this comment about others' expierences with their LUGs, what they do to be a community, and suggestions on how I might be able to make my LUG better.
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
Make sure you contact organizations like IEEE, ACM, etc. You would be suprized how much help they can be.
Also check with companies in your area. I went to a smallish school about an hour east of Mineapolis/St. Paul and we used to get people every week from companies like IBM, 3M, Honeywell, etc. They may not speak on exactly the topic you want, but you can get them for a meal and gas money at the most.
This may sound like a shameless plug but its really not. Gateway has a Linux cube, you could have the BSR bring one out to your group and you guys could tear it apart! I'm sure other big names with Linux offerings would also bring their products out. The Gateway guy may not be much to listen to but you'll get to play with some cool stuff.
What coulld be worse than having to listen to *both* of those bozos.
:o)
How about having one of them for president?
There are lots of "minor heros" in the Linux community. Rather than dribbling more sycophantic adoration upon the ESR's and the RMS's, go out and find someone who is lesser known.
Contact your local ISP's and find out who there is big into Linux. I am in a town of about 50,000 people, and we have several people who are active in the Linux community. We have one guy at one of the ISP's who is an active Debian maintainer. We have another guy who works on XFree86 drivers. Those would be interesting talks.
Or, contact your nearest University and find out what some of the PhDed professors of computer science disciplines are. Just because it's a LUG doesn't mean people aren't interested in natural language processing or robotics. Broaden your horizons. Ooohh... even better, contact the philosophy department and find out which philosophy professor is big into the net, and have them give a talk.
Finally, pick a generally used package which nobody gives much thought to, and invite it's maintainer/author to come. The less glamourous the better... something like lsof (Vic Abell)or dump (Stelian Pop). You might hear something interesting from someone you never would have thought of, and this lesser known hero will be thrilled to receive a little recognition.
You won't accomplish "success" merely by breathing the air that ESR has belched, and the cost of arranging for a "celebrity" will far outweigh the value in most cases.
On the other hand, it is a good idea to pull in people with new and interesting ideas.
There are all sorts of interesting sorts of projects out there that it would be nice to discuss with one of those involved.
- People use XFree86; it would be interesting to hear about various aspects of it, whether about the technologies of the components, or about the way the project is organized vis-a-vis licensing, source code control, and "politics."
- My LUG's last guest speaker was the organizer of LiViD; he spoke on both the technologies involved, as well as the legal wranglings surrounding DeCSS. Most excellent.
If the goal is to feel important because we got Linus to come out, that represents a pretty crummy reason.It doesn't take Dirk Hoendel to discuss that; almost anybody on the team could have useful insights. Other members of the team might actually be on the same continent.
If the goal is to learn something, then it most certainly is valuable to get speakers from remote places so that the local group doesn't get overly parochial or provincial.
A good comparison here is with academic institutions where they try to pull in guests for seminars and lectures. This helps "diversify the gene pool of ideas," where the alternatives can tend towards a sort of "academic inbreeding."
(Grumble... I need to put together a topic or three myself; the last time I presented anything locally was my Internet Filtering talk of 1997; I should probably put a couple of generic talks together that could allow me to candidate for this sort of thing... Have laptop, will travel...)
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
For other nerd related topics, I HIGHLY recommend running down Mike Abrash. He just spoke to us at UIUC and although there was a tinge of Microsoft proselytizing (naturally) to the talk he gave to us, he was one of the best college speakers I've heard yet. His anecdotes about Life algorithms and the development of Xbox were really interesting, and seemed to scale nicely depending on the listener's level of nerdiness (the more of a nerd you were, the harder you laughed). Plus, I mean, he helped make Quake. How much cooler can you get? ;-)
I'm not sure what/if we paid him, but I imagine that if anything it was very little.
We've been lucky to have a few big names at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo probably because we're close to the bay area/SV. Rasterman has stopped by on his way from Redhat in north carolina to the SV and we have some guys from Eazel coming tonight. We also get major ISP admins to talk about security, hold our own meetings covering different issuses and hold a "Free Your Machine" day where we help the community install the distro of their choice on their PeeCees. Just target some smaller projects. We got some money from our EE department to take Rasterman out to dinner but we never really offer much. I know a prof that met RMS and invited him but he wanted some absurd honorarium upwards of a couple grand. =P
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
Not a chance in hell. (Linus)
Not a problem at all. It's a LUG, so I will speak for free. Be sure of taking car of everything, I don't bring money, I don't use credit cards. Buy a business class ticket, the travel is long, you know, and I need to plug my RedHat/VA Linux notebook, I don't have time to sleep, evangelism is so hard. (Eric Raymond)
I hope not to find any commercial ads in the conference room. Don't invite ESR to speak in the same day. KDE sucks. Qt is evil. I know nothing about linux, I can talk about GNU/Linux. (Richard Stallman)
Do I have to talk about 3Com drivers? (Donald Becker)
Mamma mia, I won't be able, I am still implementing triple elevator algorithm with a single pointer buffer cache and page colouring. The I will spend my whole holidays correcting the bigs in my code and then a couple of week until I finish uploading them with my stupid 56Kmodem. Porca miseria, la madonna. (Andrea Arcangeli)
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
O'Reilly actually has a rocking User Group Program (ug.oreilly.com) and one of the membership benefits is that we can arrange speaking engagements with our authors. If an author is already in your area, it would be of no charge to your group, of course. If you request an author outside your area though, there could be travel expenses, but we never charge the group for the actual appearance.
So if you want to check out our Events page: http://events.oreilly.com/. (For example, we have Rita Lewis, author of Mac OS in a Nutshell, making a presentation to the Maryland Apple Corps. 6:30 - 8:45 p.m., Nov. 14).
I was the president of the Sydney Linux Users Group for about
five years. http://www.slug.org.au
What I did was ask local people to speak. Sometimes I had to ask
pretty directly, but once we got rolling people would often
volunteer. We have a mailing list, which helps to organise this.
You'd be surprised at the talent you have locally. You don't
need big names. The strength of Linux comes from Joe Blow
saying, 'I can do that', taking up the challenge and giving
it a go.
The other thing to be aware of is that a good speaker needn't
be a good hacker.
Someone else made the point about courtesy. I'd put it more
that you should be organised. Try to start on time, try to
keep the same format, try to keep things moving.
LUG - the U means users - sharing, helping, discussing, having fun.
Keep it about USERS and you can't go wrong.
Jamie
I'll do it. Seriously. $1000 and a blow job (gender not an issue) - and I'll blather on for hours.
Hell, I used to do it just for karma, now I'm older and wiser.
--Shoeboy
--Shoeboy
(posting anonymously to preserve my precious karma)
Now I've just gotta get a similar group started in the town where I've moved...
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
My team is in the process of open sourcing the x86/Linux version of a high end transaction processing database engine, with some unique features to allow a continuously available application (it will be available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sanchez-gtm), using database replication to provide survivability if a suicide bomber or a power outage takes out a data center, and which can be available even as the underlying computer system and database schema are upgraded under the covers. Since I am not too far from Allentown, PA, I will volunteer to give a technical talk at Lehigh, if you like to have me visit at no cost to you (depending on the time of day, pizza, cookies, soda, etc. and a university T-shirt are gratefully accepted). Having the talk jointly hosted by the Computer Science Department would be terrific.
Why will I do this? I work for a company in the area and I would like to improve relations with local universities that have Computer Science programs. In fact, this offer extends to other universities in the Philadelphia area.
Why are we open sourcing the database engine? Attend my talk and ask me.
Please send e-mail to k.bhaskar@sanchez.com.
-- Bhaskar
If any of the Melbourne, Australia LUGs want somebody to speak on GnuCash, I'm available :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
1) Find someone who has been to one of the Linux conferences and ask them who they liked: you might be surprised; there are some great, experienced speakers out there. Good geeks aren't always good speakers.
2) Get numbers, then try to get Linuxcare (my employer), RedHat, VA Linux, SuSE etc. to send one of their people. They may contribute or pay outright to send someone.
3) Try just emailing the person you want: maybe there's something near you which she/he always wanted to see, they just don't know it yet (you'd probably think they're cheesy touristy things). It's easier if you can finance it, but otherwise they may fast track you onto (2).
Hope that helps,
Rusty.
Well, since roblimo lives 10 minutes down the road...Of course he sometimes comes to the lug meeting. Of course, the first lug meetign I went to, he was talking. Somehow, his ranting until 10:30 pm inspired me. It made me come back to all of the subsequent lug meetings. You gotta love living in good ol' Maryland. And I thought my lonely little are of columbia / Elkridge didn't have anyone important. my rant is now over.
-------------
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
I'm the speaker coordinator for CLUE in Denver.
We get locals to speak. Generaly, we post requests
for speakers to the local email lists and at times
we solicit for speaker. There's little reason to
fly someone out when there are probobly interesting and informative resources right in your community.
In our LUG, anyone can do a talk and we divide our meetings up into two presentations: A KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) talk, which is a simple 30 minute introduction to some basic Linux area, and a main presentation which is usualy somewhere between 1 and 2 hours.
The KISS presentation is generaly done by and for newbies in order to get folks into presenting and to encourage participation. The idea is to introduce something and discuss a bit. Additional resources are given to help people to persue it on their own.
The main is usualy (but not necessarily) by an expert or guru and is a more detailed discussion.
Hope this helps.
Check out
http://clue.denver.co.us
Hang Loos and be cool
Not that getting someone like RMS or ESR isn't a great idea, but you might try getting someone from your local area that is actually putting Open Source into practice. A colleague of mine and myself were guest speakers at a local LUG and we explained the various software packages we were using, why we chose those packages, and exactly what we were doing with them. The presentation was 6-8 months ago and we've both still been getting feedback from many of the users (as well as the president) about how they enjoyed our presentation. When it's a "real" person presenting sometimes it can make for a longer lasting impression.
Chilli
-=- Just a random lambda hacker
The sysadmin Guild -- www.sage.org.
Our local CUG (wcug.wwu.edu) had a speaker from them come up and talk about UNIX security. Pretty geek focused, but interesting.
AFAIK, it only cost us the price of a good Mexican meal.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (please note the three letter abbreviation) can sometimes supply people to discuss current events. In particular, the legal & civil rights sides of technological issues such as the ongoing DeCSS cases. Be forewarned: If you aren't an EFF member yet, you should be, and any EFF staffer speaking at a LUG meeting will ask you to join if you have not.
I just saw him at Sheffield University, I go to Sheffield Hallam University. He went as a guest speaker / lecturer for ShefLUG if I remember correctly.
Now I really enjoyed it, I'm not a GNU/Linux (as he would say) guru. but I am getting into it and I was honoured to hear him tell his tale of how GNU started up, etc. Top notch stuff.
The relevant bit is, he said in the lecture that sometimes he charges to go speak at places, but a lot of the time (for example the time I saw him) he only charges what expenses he would incur by being there etc, and as he says, he lives cheaply! It was £3 to get in, and there were only about 100 people in the lecture.
So what I'm saying is don't give up on RMS! He really is an intense, inspired guy, and he might not say no. You don't ask if you don't get!
:)
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
Plane tickets for ESR to forget to use: $350
Unsold t-shirts made to hype the event: $300
Gas and chow to fetch nobody at the airport: $150
Damage to your group's reputation: priceless.
[
You might consider booking Shane O'Donnell from the OpenNMS Project.
He's an excellent speaker, and the project is fascinating - with a really refreshing, practical approach. He came to speak at the Pikes Peak LUG in September, and gave a very polished presentation. He does an excellent job of tailoring his level of detail appropriately for the audience.
Well, let me give you a quick run down of what happens at our CWRUlug (Case Western Reserve University) LUG meetings.
For the past two years we have scheduled weekly meetings. During these weekly meetings we have members of the group talk about some aspect of Linux, Unix, Open Source, etc. One week we'll have a talk about jargon, the next a talk about XFS and of course have the occassional Installfest. We use these talks in order to not only keep ourselves interested, but to bring new Linux users and Freshmen "up to speed" with what's going on in the Linux world.
Lately, we've seemed to attract someone "big" speakers... granted they aren't of the calibre of ESR and RMS, but it's still exciting for us. What we've been doing is in fact inviting alumni of the University working in Industry to demonstrate some of their Open Source projets, or to discuss coding techniques, etc. A lot of good sources are companies that folks have worked a co-op or summer internship for. Also, we ask faculty to present something relevant to the group. Finally, we'll ask local business leaders and companies if they'd be interested in speaking.
Want a really "big" speaker? How about combining efforts with another local LUG to perhaps entice a big name individual to come to town? Publicize the hell out of it and, if you're successful, it'll be a heck of a lot easier to get another speaker to show up.
So I guess my advice is this: Look local. You'll find a lot of capable individuals with a lot to say. It will help them because then they'll know who to recruit and it will help you because you'll know something you didn't before and might have the chance to work for a great company that embraces Open Source.
He has very little technical knowledge and hasn't contributed anything significant himself, only his annoying comments.
Maybe you've heard of Fetchmail? Emacs? Python? Do some research before talking out of your ass.
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
Try the authors of good books on open-source technologies. They are likely to be good communicators, and they also have some incentive to be visible so that they can flog their book. Most such books will have an email address for the author.
If you don't know what Python is, you probably wouldn't want him there . . . or if your LUG is fairly large than a number of people might find him uninteresting. But as the inventer of an open-source language, I'd say he's fairly well qualified to speak.
I'm not quite sure how available he is . . you'll have to pardon my lack of information. My high school was one of the first ones in the country to teach Python as a first year programming course. That was last year . . . and my teacher somehow managed to get Guido there. I don't know whether he was already in town and was interested in seeing how the class was working out or whether he speaks regularly.
At any rate, he was interesting and knowledgeabout about open-source and programming languages in general. He was also very genial and fielded questions from the class after the presentation, answering them with intelligence and accuracy.
"It's kind of hard to go with the flow when it's bashing you against the rocks"
> (As a sidenote, why is there always one of those smart-alecky geeks with the nervous sniff and inability to shut up when he is
> wrong in any group of computerphiles? Somebody smack those idiots.)
Something like 15 years ago, I had the chance to meet Douglas Adams at a book-signing here in Portland. (Lookingglass Bookstore -- cool establishment, worth delaying the eventual trip to Powell's to visit.)
When I arrived with the 3 volumes of his Hitchhiker's trilogy for him to autograph (the fourth had yet to be published), I noticed that there was a chorus of 3 ``smart-alecky geeks" standing to one side, in awe of him. (I had the impression that if given the sign, they would have fallen to their knees & recited parts of the book to him in prayerful supplication.) Needless to say, they were there only because he could not summon himself to demand they be chased away.
(For the curious, Adams is quite taller in Real Life than he appears in his photographs. He wore a leather jacket, & looked rather athletic to me at the time.)
When it came my turn for him to autograph the books, I got to ask him two questions:
Question one: ``So what did you write for Monty Python?"
(The liner notes for one of the books I owned had claimed he had worked for Python et Co.)
His face brightened, & he explained that he had worked for Python for only ``a lunchtime" at the bequest of Terry Gilliam, who apparently was a friend of his. It was just something his publicist had elaborated on, much as publicists elaborate about Bill Gate's programming skills.
Encouraged, I asked my second question: ``So will you write another book in the series?"
At this point, he lost his smile, & his interest in me. I forget exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of ``maybe".
``And you'll explain the story of the creature Arthur Dent keeps killing in each reincarnation?" I added, desperate to reclaim his approval.
``Yes, yes," he murmurred, already attending to the next person in line. As far as he was concerned, I was just another one of the chorus of ``smart-alecky geeks" he didn't have the feck to have chased away.
Since then, I have seen how authors throw up an amazingly artificial & off-putting persona around themselves when they meet their readers. I'm sure that Adams was doing roughly the same thing to me all of those years ago. But if I had to put a moral to my little (& doubtlessly off-topic) story, it would be this: you will always be a ``smart-alecky geeks with the nervous sniff and inability to shut up when he is wrong" to someone. So when you are presented with such a creature, deal nicely with this person, for he/she is simply trying to gain your approval in the only way he/she knows how.
And if you figure out how to do this successfully, please let me know how to do it.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
People who take the time who make it out to a LUG are generally the types who are going to be interesting. There have to be at least a handful of people who are doing something that is interesting enough to warrant a 30 minute talk on the subject. What makes these types of talks esp. interesting is that because everyone in the audience has context about the person, the area, etc. they can ask very specific questions that couldn't otherwise be asked.
Another thing to consider is getting locals who are doing interesting things. They don't all have to be OSS related -- just interesting and related to technology in some way. Local universities are a gold mine of people doing interesting research who would love to talk about it for the cost of a dinner.
Look back at the history of computing and you'll see that this was how a lot of user groups started. Back then, there weren't "big names that everyone heard of" to make a draw. Rather, there were group members that went up to the front and gave a 10-15 minute chat on their latest hack. They knew their audience, the audience knew them, and the level of technical detail appealed to everyone.
We booked ESR to several talks here at ITESM Monterrey, in Mexico in a 3 day span. He never missed one and we had some really big audiences, nearly 800 people attended his live talk and 1500 people saw a interview with him through the remote learning system (satellite tv broadcast) of the university. As you can see, this was a really big risk because of the large audiences, the high priced international flights, the fact that handguns of any kind are forbidden in my country (no, there are no licences to carry a gun either), and his big appetite for spicy mexican food.
He of course had a talk and hang out with the local LUG. Even released a new Fetchmail version right here from my home network. He never, at any moment, forgot any part of his schedule.
Anyway, if you have any experience making these kind of events you should know already that this things happen quite often, and most important, you should call your speaker two or one day before the day of the event.
The people who are common speakers at events like this have the tendency to be very busy people, you _should_ know that, and if this thing happened to you, in part is your fault, not ESR, because if you had established a good relation with your speaker, this thing would never happened.
I dont believe you are making a proper judgement on ESR, and, more important, Who the hell are you to judge Eric ? Eric as far as I got to know him, was a all-around nice guy, and that's the impression he left to most of the local LUG members.
Francisco Romo Alfaro
President, ITESM MTY Linux User's Group
At a local university when a student organization wants to get a speaker it's a piece of cake to fund it -- the university collects $50 from each student every quarter they attend and puts it into a fund for the student organizations. Getting a speaker is one of the easiest things to get money for from the people in charge of doling out this money.
This week at ApacheCon Europe I listened to Ralph Engelschall (mod_ssl, mod_rewrite, etc) speak. He was speaking in English, which (seeing he's Swiss) must be his third or fourth language. He was talking about SSL and security, which is a deep technical topic. He was lively, witty, inspiring, fun. He obviously enjoyed himself. He obviously knew his topic inside out. And he was able to communicate both his enjoyment and his knowledge.
I think what it comes down to is the meritocracy. Ralph Engelschall, like Alan Cox, got to his position in the meritocracy because he produces exceedingly could code ('damned cool voodoo'). You need to be pretty brilliant to produce code at that level, and many (though not all) pretty brilliant people are good speakers.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
If you live in a metropolitan area, chances are good that Open Source or Free Software "luminaries" will be in your area from time to time.
Having a good web page that is listed on GLUE is a good first step; it lets them find you.
If a conference of any sort is going to be in your area, check the guest list, and email any that appear interesting.
Don't be afraid to ask your members if they know anyone; the Orlando LUG got Ian Kluft to come speak that way, and unfortunately we had to turn down Chris DiBona but he contacted us because of a VA staffer in the LUG.
Don't be afraid to email anyone; the worst they can do is delete it unread, and you haven't wasted much time in that case.
That being said, don't be a cheap bastard, either; if your LUG can afford to pay for speakers, do so. Otherwise they might have to start charging for software to make a buck.
Oh; and watch for businesses in your area that may be in the Linux arena, they aften have contacts you don't, and will probably have interesting speakers on staff.
-
Why not invite a rep from EasyLinux http://www.easylinux.com the makers of a little known distro. Their US branch is just down the road in Allentown, PA. If it pans out, tell us what you think of the distro...it gets great reviews in Europe. They also make an easy-admin version of SAMBA.
I wish people would keep the discussion relevant to the topic rather than continuously "correcting" my .sig.
There are two major products that come out of Berkel
Well since i stated i was in minot you could assume i meant minot state university.
--------
get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
If you can't afford to fly in and hosue someoen you'll need a relatively local speaker. Without knowing where you are I don't know what to suggest.
(If your reasonably near San Jose, CA and the topic of Java Performance tunign interests your group, give me an email to corrospond privately with you.)