[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: When will the conventions come here to DFW?

[cbbrowne@godel.brownes.org]

On Tue, 03 Aug 1999 20:24:08 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
newsseeker <person at hex.net>  said:
> Just wondering when will the Open Source Forums or Linux Certification
> Courses or Linux Shows come to the DFW area?  It gets kinda frustrating
> to keep getting all these flyers for these things in Callifornia or the
> East Coast.

One of the impediments for conferences has been that NTLug wasn't
incorporated in a form that would make it a good "corporate vehicle"
(and by that I do *NOT* mean ``corporate shill'') for a conference.

Efforts are very near fruition for the process of incorporating NTLug
as a not-for-profit corporation; that will shortly thereafter, we
hope, be followed by it becoming a charitable organization for tax
purposes.

This will provide a suitable "vehicle" to support things like
conferences.

Linux Certification courses?  I think there are a couple organizations
starting to look at this.

A few weeks ago, I did lunch as the "Linux expert" with a group based
in Grapevine that do training courses for LAN stuff that thought it
would be a neat idea to add Linux to the mix.  (Brother has a coworker
who has a friend who...)  

Frankly, *they* were fairly clueless, and not in a good position to
start a training program.  I think they'd heard about Linux, and
thought that they could make some quick money during the present
"anybody-but-MSFT" phase.

In order to do this sort of thing, you need to have a clear market in
mind, and a clear way of making some money.  And to the extent to
which you're going after a "Microsoft backlash," you need to do
Profit-Taking Right Now.

Reality is that they'd need to do business development, be prepared
not to make money yet, and not be guaranteed riches tomorrow.

They didn't pay for my lunch, which told me precisely what the level
of seriousness was...
--
"No matter how much money you spend, you can't make a racehorse out of
a pig.  You can, however, make an awfully fast pig."
-- An old saying about program efficiency
cbbrowne at hex.net- <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>