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