[Ubuntu-us-wisconsin] Why the inactivity?

[Samuel J. Klein]

Hi, I just received these emails in my inbox. Thought I should share 
some ideas.

I've been a moderator for two large tech forums in the past, and I've 
been around them enough to see two major forums spike in membership and 
activity around 2006 and then drop off with various spikes throughout 
2007 - 2009 until everything kinda imploded in 2010. I was in high 
school and had lots of time on my hands. You can see actual results via 
web archives, etc.

I was in charge of the weekly newsletter. I planned events. I also saw a 
lot of activity and engagement growth under my community care. The 
number one reason was that my platform allowed people to engage with 
other members on a daily basis.

Many people may say -- go do this, etc. and then when you're there, 
people will respond. But honestly, I think it's best if the team did 
what it was most comfortable with and something that they can engage as 
much to or as little as they want/need. When you're uncomfortable, you 
sweat and show how uncomfortable you are. People get uncomfortable with 
anxiety -- because we watch too much TV. Check out Adam Kotsko's work [1].

I think one approach is to use a decentralized blogging community to 
keep people engaged -- like Planet Ubuntu [2]. This way -- we can stay 
in our own counties -- never needing to head off to some arbitrary town 
every month.

If few of our members have websites, we can use Dreamwidth, a 
decentralized journaling web application that you can register with 
using either Dreamwidth or an OpenID account. Members can subscribe to a 
"community" account and post to it. I could set it up.

For physical meetings, I propose a yearly meeting instead or bi-yearly 
if the first meeting is fun enough. That way we get pictures of all 
Ubuntu users, have some drinks (or not), play some FreeCiv or RedEclipse 
on our Ubuntu/Debian machines, and then maybe do some minor official 
things -- like talk about resources or future plans for the group.

Sam Klein

[1] https://www.bookdepository.com/Creepiness-Adam-Kotsko/9781782798460
[2] http://planet.ubuntu.com/