*Welcome to the 2009 season of PLUG's Developers Group. (PLUGdev)
*

Hi All,

The Plan is to organize the year around loose topics and get lots of your
help lining up presenters for PLUGdev 2009. The Hope is, if we work with a
bit of structure, finding people we know (like yourselves maybe) that want
to give presentations will be easier, and make for an interesting year of
presentations for and by the developers of Free Software.

Here is how it works: You think of presentations to give in the coming year
that match the topics from the Editorial Calendar, or other people that may
make interesting presenters, tell me*(way in advance) and I do the
coordination. With any luck, we will have a pair of presentations for each
PLUG Developers meeting from the topics below.

Before getting into the Editorial Calendar, let me explain it a bit. First,
these topics are general areas of interest for developers. Some will be
familiar, some will be new to you, and all of them were chosen by me
because, well because its a perk. Give me your suggestions for 2010 and I
will collect them for whoever runs the PLUGdev 2010 season.

The topics are grouped into two per quarter or season - somewhat "fixed" to
accommodate our(my) late start. On average, we want to get 3 presentations
per topic. So we have 3 meetings a season, or 6 presentations to put
together that fall into either of the two topics for each season - from
there it's catch as catch can. Take a look at the entire Editorial Calendar
and think about who you know that might be able to give a presentation on a
tool, a practice or an experience from these general topics. Talk to people
and let them know we have a forum for presentations.  and now, the Editorial
Calendar

I'm going to use 4 seasons even if most of first quarter is past, besides
Phoenix really just has Summer and Summer in Hell - ahem, the list:



*The 2009 PLUGdev Editorial Calendar*

Spring - post Spring Equinox (April, May, June)
A) *Build it, and they will download*
Presentations on the configure make make-install cycle - alternative
compilation tools - gotchas - can anyone ever really explain Make...
B) *On the Wire*
Choosing a wire protocol, using a socket, going all the way down to the wire
with firewire, USB, PoE  etc - even if it's wireless (solder optional)

Summer - post Summer Solstice (July, August, September)
A) *Calling Klondike....*
     Developing for VoIP & SIP - explain how you did it with Asterisk,
Telepathy, Jingle, ZRTP etc ...(and why)
B) *IDE, you DE?*
     It gets you coffee and fetches your paper - like Eclipse, but not
always Java - reports from the pinball wizards about the tables

Fall - Fall Equinox (October, November, December)
A) *Repo Man*
     You keep it where? your work goes into version management systems of
all kinds, introduce 'em, explain the types, and reveal the tricks
B) *Gadget Land*
     Android, Maemo, Symbian, OpenMoko and developing on systems with tight
specs, interesting roles and bright colors (and maybe a DSP)

Winter - post Winter Solstice, which is arguably the 2010 PLUGdev season...
 but I digress
A) *Stacks for the Embedded*
     Getting what you need when you have room for nothing more. Libraries
and tools for the confined - embedded browsers, dropbear, busybox, clutter
 etc
B) *Letting Go*
     Everything from picking the numbers to unit tests to uploading source
and rpms to sourceforge/launchpad etc - what goes into distributing fresh
versions



Start thinking about who would be good for what, refer to the topics with
their name in bold (*Gadget Land*) or by season & letter (aka Fall B).
For now just begin to think about who you know, what you might want to talk
about - where will you be on that first Thursday? There are no conflicting
holidays as best I can figure, so let me know if you know of any.

Enjoy Stammtisch

And, in a day or two, I will post instructions on how you can help make this
happen - *This will include an online form for you to fill out or forward to
a potential presenter that will front-end the whole process - so please
await instructions. Feel free to comment on this whole circus and/or just
think about presentations that can make these topics interesting. There are
24 presentations for the PLUGdev 2009 season - with your help we can find
'em!

If contacting me directly about this (and not via the PLUG or PLUGdev lists)
please help me sort and use plugdev2009 At gmail D0t c0m.

Thank you for your help making 2009 a great year for Developers of Free
Software - Ed Nicholson