[Tfug] Bringing the FSF to Tucson

[Claude Rubinson]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 01:36:07PM -0700, Jim Secan wrote:
> Actually, I think the interest died off with the issue of paying for
> one or more FSF folks to trek out here to the fringe of
> civilization.  I think you could get people to help set something
> up, but getting people to help pay for someone to come out to Tucson
> for a beer is iffy.

Money is (part of) the issue but nobody's asking anybody to pay
anything out of pocket.  The UofA will provide money for campus club
activities, so I was thinking that we might work with HACKS (the UofA
Hardware and Computer Knowledge Society) to write a grant proposal.
But nobody stepped up from either HACKS or TFUG.  Restriction here is
that we need at least one formal member of HACKS to sign the proposal.
(And I'm not pointing fingers here: I'm happy to coordinate but I
don't have the time to write a grant proposal myself.)

> They've mostly gone nowhere because Tucson just doesn't have a big
> enough critical mass of people who would really be involved in such
> an event.

We've got enough people to sustain a happy hour two (and sometimes
three!) times per month.  When the TFUG lectures were happening a few
years back, plenty of people turned out.  In my experience, it's
almost never about a lack of interest per se but, rather, a lack of
interest/time/whatever in organizing the event.

At least once per month, somebody asks (either on the list or at happy
hour) "When are we going to have another BYOB event?"  And the answer
is always the same: "When you organize it."

I'm not saying that this is a bad thing.  I originally organized the
happy hours because *I* wanted them, not out of any sense of calling.
But I don't want a Tucson FSF event so badly that I'm going to
organize the whole thing by myself.  But since I happen to be in
contact with the FSF from time to time, I figured that I'd float the
idea and see if anybody wanted to run with ball (to mix metaphors a
bit).

Claude