tlug: reflections on recent TLUG growth

[Craig Oda <craig@example.com>]

Hi,
at some point in the evening, a few of us were reflecting
on the recent growth in TLUG membership.

Jim Schweizer made a nice page that lists all the minutes
of the past TLUG meetings since September, 1994.
   http://www.twics.com/~tlug/meeting.html

I was reviewing the events and I think that there are two
turning points for TLUG.

One was the February, 1997 meeting.  Due to the amazingly hard
work of John Little, Andy Howell and Alberto Tomita, we had
a large showing of members.  John supplied the group with Sparc
SLC and ELC equipment.  He also organized the event with
Andy Howell to show a new level of professionalism that the
group never saw before.

The next crtical point came in June of 1997.  At this meeting,
Joe Marchak hosted the meeting at HSBC.  Although the 
number of members was small, Joe brought up a vision of
making TLUG a bigger, more active group.  He volunteered
his office for the next meeting.  This was a major factor
for the stabilization of meeting dates, which allowed
TLUG to advertise the meetings.

The August 1997 meeting was small.  But there were two
key things.  1) Marc Christensen came from the Salt Lake
Linux Users Group and brought software samples from
Caldera.  This made us think of the possible benefits of
distributing prizes to the members.  2) John Little led
a historic walk through Akihabara's best used Sparc hardware
bargains.  It was on this walk that Joe Marchak expressed
his committment to making TLUG bigger and better.  With a
stable meeting place and a vision for a greater TLUG, we
were off.

Looking at the pictures, it appears that Alberto, Joe, and
John, were at almost all of the recent TLUG events.

Regards,
Craig

------
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