I am interested in starting an Australian HUG.[1]
Maybe some online meetings, a mailing list, that sort of thing.
Is there interest for that in the community?
[1] according to PulkoMandy there was one back in 2014 http://haikudownunder.com
3 Likes
As for me I’m happy just tinkering with my code and don’t really have time for being social or meetings. Outside of software development I have my guitar and playing with a band, family commitments etc. And if course full time work.
I’ve left Australia after 35 years, however I would gladly attend a European gathering. Thats another topic however.
2 Likes
I don’t mean in person, i mean having zoom meetings or something.
Not an Australian but a student studying in Australia for a few years, may I join?
Sure, but i haven’t set anything up yet.
I haven’t seen him in the forums lately but @Sikosis pops up in IRC every few years. You could see if he is interested since he used to run several events “down under”
There were many user groups for BeOS at that time, which were still active at the beginning of Haiku. Over the years, however, these have been closed more and more, as the main concentration of people is on the official forum.
I don’t think a usergroup will be of much use, because people will hardly spend any time there and will also get more questions about problems answered in the official forum.
In addition, a lot of information was stored in the user groups that was lost when the pages were closed. (We were able to save some of them in our knowledge base with the respective permission). In the official forum, however, these are retained.
In my opinion, it therefore makes more sense to participate in existing projects than to create new ones.
I tend to disagree, it’s not uncommon to find prompt answers or support within your local user group. Sometimes more quickly than in the forum especially if the group uses a Telegram (or whatever) chat for example. This must not replace the forum to share knowledge with a wider audience but it represents a valid option in addition.
There’s also an opportunity to attend local conferences or meet-ups and spread the word.
It would be also great to have specific sites for each HUG to share knowledge, tricks, and more also to let people outside of it know more about Haiku.
But are there regular online meetings where Haiku users can talk, and help each other with their problems?
Creating a regular online meeting is very easy if there’s enough interest in it.
It only needs a Jitsi server (and there are lots of public ones we could use) and someone who manages the schedule (when should the meetings take place?)
It doesn’t even need to come directly from Haiku,it can also be completely community-organized.
I recommend starting with one big meeting in English for all users around the world,and if you see that there’s much interest from one country,maybe add a specific meeting in their native language.
Where should there be more people who deal with haiku than here in the official forum?
But that assumes that there are many members who are then regularly online. Telegram groups or other groups can also be created via the official forum if like-minded people can be found there.
But that also works here. That only makes sense if you speak a language other than English.
We already had that too, with the result that a lot of knowledge has disappeared because the pages were not preserved.
In addition, as already mentioned, we have a knowledge base and a user guide. I would rather appreciate that one participates in these projects instead of collecting knowledge, which eventually disappears because the operator is no longer interested and simply switches off (as has already happened in the past).
I don’t want to make this completely bad, but I want to share the experience here that we’ve had over the years.
Ultimately, everyone can do what they want, but I think you should always consider what would be better for the community.
Yes and… that’s exactly what user groups are for.
Why? There is already a lot of resources for english speaking users. And a worldwide group makes it a lot more difficult to organize meetups (real-life, of course, but also online because of timezones).
Start with whatever you want. If you want to run a group for all english speaking people, that’s one possible choice. I think there is a telegram group for spanish speaking community (mainly latin america but I guess a few people from spain will be there as well). And there is also a large russian community I think (although I never joined that one because I would not be able to understand anything).
On the French side we try to have a presence at various already existing opensource events and it is an opportunity to meet people as well (although that is often a bit informal). There used to be BeGeistert in Germany, organized by the Haiku Support Association, formally known as BeFAN, the local user group. Because it is a lot easier to organize such a thing in your own country/city than it is to attempt to organize a worldwide event.
Dear @lelldorin ,
you may forget you can get a wider public BUT
-
not in your native language - so might get lesser to be misunderstood and avoid the topic you would speak about or discuss about …
-
have (even unintended) trolls or bend away due to smartasses. That happens here often - even when moderators asks to not to do or stop that way.
More people not always the best hit to have right answer or have good receive of your thoughts/issues.
EDIT :
you may remember some posts we could not ‘encrypt’ sometimes due to topic launcher’s bad english and/or insufficient technical knowledge about a PC or other device.
He/she could have use their native languge in a group where he could have get a longer explanation than on a forum post - verbally. This way it is a good to have user groups - however I think those more practical - in person.
Some who has problems to solve – much easier to show what they meant when they talked about X menawhile it is really Y in a good term.
1 Like
Hurrah - have a good meeting - Down Under !..
I can understand all that and yes it is easier to explain something in your mother tongue or to have it explained.
I’m talking here about empirical values from a time when we still had a German (BeUsergroup), an Italian (itBUG), a Belgian (Sorry Begasus I can’t remember the name), etc. user group. These are all gone today because the users switched to the haiku forum one after the other and it no longer made sense to run them.
At that time, we (besly) took over the BeUsergroup (probably the most well-known user group) and also maintained it for years to come. But since in the end no one used this platform anymore, we closed it too.
As I said, everyone can do what they want and if it works, why not. But I already have many of these projects and see attempts fail.
By the way, this forum has an international section for other languages.
Maybe it also makes sense where the writing differs from the european one (China, Japan…), or generally in countries where english is not taught at school or other languages are in focus.
It wasn’t that hard to remember … BeBUG 
1 Like
These initiatives faded away because more and more people lost touch with BeOS after Be’s demise, myself included.
I was a very active member of itBUG, I proposed the idea for a free magazine (Beyond) and ultimately served as the chief editor and did all the page make-up but in the end I went away. Suffice to say that I regret it. Now some of the old itBUG members and new comers talk, help each other, share ideas on a daily basis (Genio was born from these endless discussions). Are we a HUG? Fundamentally, we are. We just don’t attend conferences and meet-ups or have a website anymore (or not yet, depending on the way you look at it 
).
So I think that there’s still room for HUGs along with the broader international community. And I think it’s also a golden opportunity to spread the word
1 Like
Yes, with the death of the BeUGs/HUGs, many tutorials have disappeared in addition to the forum entries with useful information. So I always have concerns about that.
I spent a long time getting in touch with authors and then porting content to the BeSly (old BeSly) after their approval.
So if you do a HUG, it would be great if the tutorials and assistance are designed in such a way that they can also be entered elsewhere, or if they are also made available via our knowledge base.