open sc mtg notes

[der.hans]

moin, moin,

OK, to start off we only had 11 people there. Robert was the only person
who made prior arrangements not to show, so the rest of you have to go a
week without slashdot or user friendly! :)

Seriously, though, 11 people (a third of whom already work to put these
things on) is not a large representation of PLUG. We've got over 350
subscribees and regularly get 40 or more for the East Valley meetings.

All right, on to the meeting review:

One of the big topics was location, location, location. We will do what we
can to continue to encourage others to have meetings in other parts of the
Valley. We might hold one of the main meetings at new locations as they
open up as a means of giving them more support. This goes against the
rule of consistently having meetings at the same place/time, though
:(. We'll have to decide this as a group as new meetings open up.

Hans will give Jim a list of places that he believes would host meetings
for us. Jim will post that to the discuss list.

Jim is going to start a newbie meeting. Hans will try to obtain room at
the Boys and Girls Club as Jim needs it to be convenient for him. Wes,
read this far yet? Who would we talk to?

Paul and Carl are going to work working up a 10 year celebration. They're
gonna try to get us someone who who has helped it come this far for a
keynote speaker. Paul is interested in making it a one or two day seminar.

Hans suggested having a picnic in Apr. A PLUG family day. This would be a
chance for our families to get to see other members of the group as well
as for us to meet more of us face to face. Paul suggested generators and a
wireless network so we don't have to jones for a connection while we're
out there :).

It was suggested to shorten the presentations some in order to give people
more time to kibitz after the main presentation. Maybe even form SIGs
after the main presentation. A couple of people thought that went well
after the alternative architectures meeting, e.g. clusters around Monte
Vista embedded and iPaqs.

It was mentioned that it can be difficult to hear speakers. Brian is going
to try to mike future meetings. It was also suggested that those in
install row be quieter :). On a related note Brian is going to try to get
a direct feed of the overhead for the net broadcasts.

There were other things mentioned before I started taking notes...

Topics that might be of interest:
sys_adm
kernel compile
star|k|word perfect|* office
font server, e.g. pretty print displays
state of the desktop ( did we mention Jiva will be doing part of this Thu? :)
VPN
games, e.g. what's avail for linux and hardware presentation

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
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