When Joan Smith, the first President of the SGML Users' Group first created the Group, she made sure that the original constitution supported the creation of Chapters and Special Interest Groups (SIGs). However, initially, there were only direct members of the Group. Throughout her Presidency, she made sure that the growth of Chapters was encouraged and, on stepping down as President, left a legacy of a thriving group.
As a member of that Group, through Datalogic's corporate membership, I remember getting meeting notices. These were very memorable as they were scheduled to take place in London. As tempting as the notices were, I just never could justify a trip to London for a one-day meeting. Joan was very aware as well that meetings in London only benefited those who could get to the meetings, and not the many other members who were too far afield. The immediate solution was the creation of Chapters that can hold meetings in a relatively smaller geographical area. But local Chapters typically don't grow large enough to leverage buying power, such as book and conference discounts nor do most of them generate enough news to publish a newsletter.
Add to this the fact that starting a Chapter can be a very time-consuming and expensive undertaking. Many chapters are heavily subsidized by a corporate sponsor, but not all of them are so lucky.
So, the international SGML Users' Group, has been studying this problem for quite awhile. [As in most volunteer organizations, "quite awhile" goes on quite a bit longer than one ever imagined!] And, we now have a clearer idea of how it is possible for us to adapt the Group to the needs of the growing SGML community.
