[Ubuntu Chicago] How can we improve our events??

[swoody]

At our last Team Meeting, the idea was brought up that we could
improve our events quite a bit to appeal to more members, and thus see
higher turnouts. Many ideas were brought up, and it would be great to
see how people feel about it. Should we orient our events in more of a
social nature? Should we have more presentations? Should we really
hunker down and focus on getting work done?

One of the points I made in the meeting was that you can't please
everyone 100% of the time. If we schedule all of our meetings to be
geared in one direction or another, you're going to lose the people
who were leaning the other way. I think it would be best if we gave
our events a wide range of focus, so we can appeal to all people at
one point or another. Such as having Jams where a certain topic could
be covered, and then the rest of the time is getting down to business.
Then we could hold other events, which may be more of a learning
experience with presentations and more in-depth information. Then on
the other side of the board, there would be events - maybe along the
lines of an Install Fest, or Release Party - which would be much more
social in nature, and would only focus on hanging out and maybe
answering some basic questions here or there. Finally, we could have
completely social events, maybe just going out around the city and
passing around Ubuntu CDs, or just going to a Buffalo Wild Wings and
hanging out. I feel this would give everyone at least *some* events
that they would enjoy, and I feel that we would see a higher overall
turnout. But that's just my $.02 ;)

How do you guys feel? What would you like to see different about our
events - or even the Loco in general? For those of you who were at the
meeting, please also speak your mind here, so everyone else can hear
your side.

--
Steve
swoody at ubuntu.com