1:48 p.m.
Hi,
You can probably guess the contents of this e-mail. The short version
is that we're not going to do any more workshops or social meetings
(they're marked as cancelled on the web site) until the situation
changes. Changes? Like how? That's a good question, but certainly not
how things are at the moment. We'll keep you posted and for more
information on this decision keep reading...
Our benefactors at Internet Central (that allow us to use the 'Workplace
Recovery Suite' room for our workshops) have quite rightly begun to have
their staff working from home and have brought in strict controls and
tests for visitors. This would simply not be very workable for a
project like the LUG, where literally anyone can turn up, and of any number.
The last meeting was last week and was a social, luckily it went ahead
just fine. However we expect by the time that we have another social
(which are normally every quarter) the pubs might all be empty - but
we'll have to see.
We really like literally hearing your different voices at our regular
meetings... as it conveys everyone's personality and humour far better
than just text.
One idea has been to utilise the voice channels we already have on
Discord. Whilst not everyone is a fan of Discord, it is a feature which
things like IRC do lack. To those that would argue we'd all be talking
over each other, it wouldn't be any different than when we're all in a
room together!
We'll try to check if anyone is in the 'staffslug' voice channel at 7pm
every Tuesday, and if there is... we'll stick around. There won't be any
agenda, it'll just be general chatter.
Another possibly is that we host something like BigBlueButton for doing
"Virtual Workshops". We'll let you know if we do that.
No online activity however, would properly replace physically meeting
up. It's our opinion that one of the main reasons to have a LUG these
days, is the way they differentiate themselves from so many online-only
groups.
Hopefully if you're reading this, you and your loved ones will get
through this latest madness and we'll all see each other again soon.
All the best,
Richard Bateman,
Steven Maddox &
Mark Sherratt
Staffordshire Linux User Group