We have weekly meetings in three different locations (practical because of the big geographical area we cover) as well as quite a few meetings every year like Software Freedom day, participating in Ubuntu release parties and so on.

All in all we’re probably at 150+ meetings every year and have been for the last few years. And we probably average 20 talks (usually 1 hour talks) per year when not counting larger happenings like release parties etc.

We are really enjoying ourselves being involved in open source and Linux.

happy hacking!

Bergwolf

The Linux Users of Victoria (http://www.luv.asn.au/) has active meetings and is just about to start running beginners workshops for new members who aren’t as familiar with Linux as the old timers. As a former committee member I know how hard it can be to keep these going as even with 20-50 people turning up for meetings and many more on the mailing lists it can be hard to find new and exciting talks for people! The group also runs an annual BBQ.

cheers,
Chris

Here Shenzhen Linux Unix User Group is also very active, we have well organized rules and a board to keep regular meetings, and propose good topics, invite people to give presentations for each month, actually we meet more often than monthly;

http://www.szlug.org/ (Most pages Chinese currently)
http://groups.google.com/group/szlug (mailling list)

While most meetings are Linux technics centric, sometimes we also hold out-door activities such as climbing mountains, and some other styles of entertainment events;

In China, there are also LUGs in many others cities, we have kept a page to track most active LUGs in other cities of China and out of China,

http://wiki.szlug.org/w/Category:LUG

I and a group of volunteers tried organising a event http://www.mukt.in at Hyderabad for which we had to approach both LUG’s of which we were members and inclined to one group .

There was also a FSF group for that state.
Strangely the main LUG ILUGHYD died and our event mailing list is now more active than the ILUGHYD mailing list thopugh we kind of post to both lists .

It’s so easy to throw up a wiki page, or create a mailing list, and start meeting to talk about things weekly or monthly. Portland, OR has a unique culture developing around this, and the manic activity around it is somewhat documented in our community’s custom-developed calendaring system — http://www.calagator.org.

I gave a user groups talk at FOSDEM over the weekend — http://tr.im/fjbl and Gabrielle Roth and I produced a printable pamphlet for OSCON last year that details how you can run your own user group: http://tr.im/fn81

We need to convert that printable thing into a wiki page, but you know, there’s never enough time in the day

One interesting thing I noticed about the FOSDEM crowd was that the audience was intrigued by the idea of creating an ad hoc group, without a formal leadership structure or a non-profit/legal status established. Several people commented to me after the talk that this seemed like a great way to get people interacting with one another without all of the pain of establishing a non-profit. Not sure if other countries/cultures have the same issues (favoring formal organization, over the informal, sometimes chaotic groups I tend to be interested in and work with).

Oh, and someone in the audience asked specifically about non-hierarchical organizations, and groups that truly have no leader. That was some food for thought — I’ve seen a couple groups operate that way, but there tended to be forks in the community after a couple years. Not sure that’s really a bad thing, but certainly an interesting part of user group culture and something I would like to blog/speak about more in the future.

My thoughts on the matter are that you can run a new LUG easily. Discuss Linux over coffee every month with someone else, and you have yourself a LUG! The above links have many recommendations, but don’t assume they are restrictions stopping you from getting started.