but then why arent successful projects shared or talked about in forums like this one?
I think, we need to develop one single mega site (preferably wiki based etc) for pooling all our talk/ideas of all our LUGs and sharing of successful,unsuccessful projects experiences for the time being. Later on (after an year or two), there will be differences of opinion and groups may make other sites for the same purpose or as offshoots of this major portal which is inevitable and also a good thing --the more the merrier.
There will need to be some solid editing/copy writing, website reviewing/rating etc since most of us are nerds and we need the strengths of others who are less technical minded etc. A case in point is the way the Ubuntu project has people from different backgrounds --eg Mathew East collaborates on the project by coordinating for the localisation team even though his speciality is that of a lawyer and that too across 2 or 3 countries (Italian, English and French).
I feel we hardly know each others strengths even in our own smaller groups and most nerds feel safer with people of similar types. But our real challenge is to be salesmen sometimes and increase our ability to appreciate others and convince them to hear us (by first improving our ability to listen to them). A big problem in adoption of open source is, I feel with our inability to get thru to teachers and the retired people and specially the poorer middle class. The critical mass is not happenning with respect to seeing open source as a prestigious way of making money. Open source projects are not talked about in the business magazines as something which a group of 15 year olds or 25 year old whizkids have accomplished and made money on or helped the business in any cost effective way. This is unlike the impetus given by the media in the US to whizkid stories at the start of the PC phenomena in the 70s or 80s.
Kush