Re: Virtual LUG Speakers was->RE: Another AS/400/iSeries/i5 User Group bits the dust

On 10/30/06, albartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>PHUN400 is officially closing due to lack of membership attendance and the
ability to get good speakers - according to the outgoing chairman.

I wonder if the lack of good speakers could be addressed by going the online
meeting route?  The company I work for has a decent amount of "virtual
office" going on and we bridge the gap by using gotomeeting.com on a daily
basis.  Wouldn't be too hard to do something like that for LUGs and you
could get speakers at a fraction of the cost (i.e. no travel/lodging/food),
and get them more frequently.  It would work similar to the RPG & Beyond Web
Conference I was a part of:
http://www.pentontech.com/onlineconf/isn/rpgandbeyond06/

The only thing I didn't like about the RPG & Beyond experience is that it
isn't as interactive as it could be (i.e. people can only listen in and
provide feedback via text messages).  That could easily be solved by simply
doing a regular conf call though.

What would rock is if somebody at iSociety would take this as a challenge
and address it by creating a calendar of places and locations where "virtual
speakers" will be "showing up" at LUGs.  Actually, the right person/company
could run with this and make some nice jing by providing low cost training
at LUGs ;-)

Great idea Aaron.  The money IBM is spending sending its speakers to
the local groups could be spent instead on the equipment the LUGs need
to do this sort of thing. Instead of George Farr making the rounds,
speaking to 20 people every night, the entire IBM RPG team could do an
interactive video presentation on a single night to as many local
groups as want to patch in.

-Steve