Re: Future steps and invigoration of SeaPUG

Josh has a lot of great ideas.

There were several other items that we talked about, that I thought he had good points on.

1. Seapug mailing list

We don't have enough traffic/chatting on the Seapug mailing list and this makes it appear as if this is a dead pug. That is one reason that Josh is posting our chat for the mailing list to discuss in general. While we talk about items at the meetings, but don't post the results here on the list. Josh says that we should post them here so that people know we are thinking about the items and that this is an active pug.

I also know that many people who have come in the past did not signup for the mailing list even though I asked them to. I know that I am that type of person myself and I wonder if that is just the personality of the Seattleite's in general.

Josh also had a good idea of putting a summary of our meetings on the list, this includes highlights of the talk, what we thought about the talk, etc.

2. PgDay

I think this is a great idea, but I have never worked on a project that large and I don't think any of our regulars have also. It would be nice if we could talk Josh or someone who has done this type of thing before to mentor several of us is doing this so that we can do it ourselves in the future.

3. Interact with other user groups

Josh has a great idea in this respect. Interacting with the other user groups so that we are giving Postgres talks at their meetings, such as Postgres with Perl at the Perl user group. Then inviting them to give talks at our group about their usage of Postgres. This would really help with adding a variety of speakers.

4. Josh speaking

Josh has offered to come up on multiple occasions with very little feedback. I know that we got a little feed back on the list but not very much. Most of the people around here do not seem to want to post on the list. This is something we need to change, see some of the other points on how to get more activity on the list.

5. Possibly associate with PgUS. PhillyPUG and NYCPUG have already done this. It allows the PUG to have non-profit status, legally accept money and legally spend money.

By doing this, we have the ability to accept donations from companies to help pay for things such as PgDay, pay for swag that we give out at things like PgDay or Linux Fest Northwest. We could also buy and charge for swag items to help pay for things that Seapug want to do.

6. Update the website. Perhaps move to http://www.meetup.com/ or have a simpler wiki (redmine?) style interface.

Lee: Meetup.com-hosted websites often have redirection problems. Using Meetup for organization is fine, but please don't rely on Meetup for any web content. Likewise, their mailing list options are lame, don't use those.

I have resisted using Meetup because to me is it a sign of a "fly by night" organization to use it. Maybe that is just because I am too old school about it. To me using them is like having a yahoo email address for your business instead of using one at your own domain name. Plus I did not want to pay the fee to be listed on Meetup. Now if PgUS wanted to pay for it, then I would be lot more willing to try it.

7. Move the meetings

While I think there are higher priority things to deal with, I am interested in other people's feed back on what Josh had to say about this issue.

8. Any other ideas?

a. Lee: Add SeaPUG events to SeattleTechCalendar.

It is already listed there, but I do see it listed on the wrong day. I will get an email off to him today to get the listing updated.

b. Lee: Use of Postgres in some cloud solutions? There are about half a dozen local cloud-centric user groups/meetups, where Postgres could have an intro.

I don't know of anyone who uses Postgres in the cloud, are there any of you out there? I would be interested in hearing from you not only to talk at the cloud-centric user groups but also at the Seapug group.

c. Lee: There's two active Hadoop/NoSQL groups in the area. Showing how to migrate data to/from SQL via Postgres might be useful for some users of these groups.

Lee: There are a lot of startups in the area, and multiple startup groups (Seattle Tech Startups is probably the largest). Frugal entrepreneurs that can't afford a lot of commercial software with their startup costs, and many don't know anything but SQL Server, so Postgres would be welcome for some. Perhaps some "Migrating from SQL Server..." or "Upgrading from MySQL..." talk would be helpful.

We have had some general talks in this area, but not a migration or upgrading from x software to Postgres. Please give feedback if you are interested in talks in this area and which x software, e.g. SQL Server, MySQL, etc.

Lloyd