[advocacy-discuss] Proposal for new OSUGs in Hangzhou/Xi'an at China

[Jim Grisanzio]

Qingye Jiang (John) wrote:

<snip>
> he Open Community team led by James Bai is also doing great
> work in building OSUG's, they might come by and ask to setup new OSUG's
> in some other area in China very soon.
>   

Cool. If they need any help, ping this list or let me know.

> It is interesting that different OSUG's in China show different
> behavior. For example, the one in Beijing (BJOSUG) tends to use Sun
> speakers extensively, because there are a lot of Sun engineers available
> as speakers (the meeting venue is actually a conference room in Tsinghua
> Science Park that hosts Sun China Engineering and Research Institute).
> The meetings are like lectures with Q&A's. The three OSUG's in Chengdu
> (CDOSUG), Hangzhou (HZOSUG) and Xi'An (XAOSUG) tend to use none-Sun
> speakers. Because all these areas are remote from Sun offices and it is
> not possible to have Sun people to present each and every time. The
> meetings are like salons, with equal amount of presentations and
> discussions (or event more discussions). All these three OSUG's choose
> to use cafe instead of conference rooms for their meetings. This
> eliminates the need to rent a meeting facility, and OSUG members do not
> expect others to pay for their drink. Generally speaking, the size of
> BJOSUG is a lot bigger, with audience size of 60-150, while the ones in
> Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Xi'An has about 20-30. This small size makes it
> convenient to host the meetings anywhere, and promotes a community
> sharing -- rather than lecturing -- atmosphere. We believe that this
> might be a good direction to build OSUG's in China, still experimenting...
>   

Smaller sizes further away from Sun offices do offer some flexibility, I
agree. Others have reported similar experiences. Also, your observations
on the "lecture" style is also interesting. There is a lot of that here
in Japan, but I think it's common in some other regions as well. To
break things up a bit, the team here is doing more nomikais
(drinking/eating parties) after the main sessions, so this way there is
no structure at all but you are still together talking about the
technology over beers. In general, I find that the most interesting
groups try to focus more on doing a greater number of shorter sessions
rather than a few long sessions. Again, this is just an effort to
increase participation and reduce formality.

> I am concerned by the fact that Shenzhen (SZOSUG) and Shanghai (SHOSUG)
> are now less active than before. 

I have to be in Hefei in mid November, which seems pretty close to
Shanghai. I may be able to stop by if need be. Think we can get a little
meeting together? Nothing formal, of course. :)

> Our team might try to rejuvenate these
> two OSUG's, with the experienced we acquired from Chengdu, Hangzhou, and
> Xi'An. This is exactly why we do not want to register the OSUG in
> Nanjing at this point. We want to do some work of good quality before
> attaching an OSUG label to it.
We appreciate that. :) And we appreciate that these new groups in China
are connecting to the main community like this. I think all sides will
learn a great deal from this experience.

Jim
-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/