[plug] Last night's workshop, membership update; Rusty talk reminder; general PLUG news

Tue Aug 23 15:17:33 WST 2011

Hi James,

Wow, you're doing a great job! You have really breathed life back into
PLUG well done. You mentioned PLUG T-shirts; I would be very
interested in getting one, even more so if it was a nice embroidered
polo shirt with or a "proper" shirt that I could wear to work.  I
would be willing to part with about $50 for one or if they were less
than $30 each I’d be looking at getting two. If there is anything I
can do to help with these please let me know.

Regards,
Michael

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 1:26 PM, James Bromberger <james at rcpt.to> wrote:
> Hello PLUG,
>
> I made this email longer than usual because I lack the time to make it
> shorter -- Blaise Pascal (mostly).
>
> Last night PLUG held its first general workshop at Artifactory. Many thanks
> to Daniel and the folks at Artifactory in again letting us use their space,
> power and network link for this. I think we had a total of around 15 bodies
> through the evening -- some getting help, some helping, and some working on
> the AV project's own workshop/test. Many thanks to Nick for scheduling this
> event.
>
> With further good news, I can report that PLUG's current financial
> membership total has hit 70 paid up members, up from around 22 in January.
> Many thanks to everyone who has contributed by becoming a PLUG member. While
> over triple January's total is a great achievement, I'm now eyeing off the
> 100 mark as the next milestone! Full membership is just $20/year, and
> concession (students, pensioners, etc) is just $10/year. We still have
> around 280 people subscribed on the PLUG list who aren't members yet (from
> 350 total subscribers); I'd love to hear off-list what PLUG can do to tempt
> non-member subscribers in to become members!
>
> This increase in membership reduces the farcical issue we had with the PLUG
> Constitution in January (minimum quorum was 30, and we had 22 members, so
> emergency measures had to be done with a repeated meeting the following
> week, etc), but in order to avoid this next time, we will start to look soon
> at amendments to make the quorum work in scenarios where membership falls;
> more details on this when we have a crystal clear understanding of what
> needs to be proposed -- trust me, even mentioning the C word gets some
> people in a tis, so lets avoid it and stay calm -- we'll discuss this in a
> later thread.
>
> We're getting closer to our Rusty Russell event on Tuesday 11th October.
> This is going to be a big evening; not only is Rusty giving a talk, but
> we're going to be running a discussion panel as well, debating the State and
> Future of Linux & Open Source in Australia. This panel will have experts in
> Computer Science, Intellectual Property and Law, plus Rusty and perhaps
> more, and will be based upon the audience input on the evening. We're also
> looking to do a pizza order for the intermission between the talk by Rusty,
> and the panel session; for this reason, we need people to book (and pay for)
> their tickets ASAP. Tickets are $20 for members, $50 for non-members, and
> free for university computer science/IT students*; email tickets at plug.org.au
> for details on paying (bank direct deposit or cash to a committee member).
> On the night, door tickets will be $50 for everyone, regardless of
> membership or being a university CS/IT student on the night. Please help
> this be a success:
>
> Get your own ticket now
> Convince a friend to get their ticket now
> Grab the poster from the web site (PDF available) and put it up at
> work/school/uni
> Think of whom you would like to see give a presentation next time we fly a
> speaker in!
> Help out on the AV project (subscribe to the separate mailing list - see
> http://lists.plug.org.au/)
>
> In other random news on PLUG....
>
> Our new PLUG banner got an outing at the last talk (thanks again to Mason
> for the talk). Thanks to Jason and Peter for their input on logo designs.
> We're looking now at PLUG T-Shirts, and possibly even proper shirts. If
> you're interested in this please speak up!
>
> We ran a poll around people at the last meeting (and on our Facebook group)
> and have settled on running a summer/end-of-year/Christmas/whatever BBQ in
> early December (at this stage, Sunday 4th Dec); its in the PLUG calendar.
> More details closer to the date.
>
> We have a talk by Greg Orange schedule for September on clustered file
> systems; the venue is yet to be confirmed, and two weeks after that on
> Monday 26th September we're back at The Moon & Six Pence for a drink. I'm
> already starting thinking of next years Quiz Night; if you'd like to help
> organise some of it please let me know (probably will be around end of March
> time). We're also looking at running a few more panel sessions for
> discussion/debate; let committee know if you have a hot topic and some
> people you'd like to see debate it!
>
> Software Freedom Day is coming up in September, and thus far no one has been
> forthcoming in coordinating PLUGs involvement. As such, sadly PLUG has no
> solid plans. If you have time to look into SFD and think of something to do,
> please let committee know. I'm sure that there's PLUGgers would would help
> out, but someone needs to work out a plan!
>
> Our Mumble/Icecast/etc server (Bath) is about to get a tiny upgrade (a
> second CPU) sometime in the next few weeks; we're considering having Bath do
> video transcoding from high quality stream to a low quality one on-the-fly
> (if anyone wants to play with it). Shameless is still in a bit of a state;
> hopefully it will get a new Ethernet card in a few weeks as well and stop
> dropping off the network every few seconds!
>
> Committee meeting is next Monday night at 7:30pm AWST -- online on IRC
> (#plug on irc.plug.org.au) and Mumble (mumble.plug.org.au). You're welcome
> to attend and listen in, and contribute your ideas, or volunteer to help
> out. Before then, grab the Mumble client (version 1.2.3) for Linux, Windows
> or MacOS and try connecting to mumble.plug.org.au. Grab a headset if you
> have one, or just a set of headphones if you haven't (to reduce audio
> feedback from any other mic you may have, like on a laptop).
>
> I could continue, but that's probably enough for now.  :)
>
> Thanks to everyone who is helping revive PLUG, especially committee who are
> putting in time in meetings and discussions. There's clearly a lot going on.
>
> Thanks,
>
>   James
>
>
> * This is in exchange for UWA hosting this event in their lecture theatre;
> Uni CS/IT students STILL NEED TO EMAIL to get a ticket. Proof of enrollment
> will be required on the night.
> --
> Mobile: +61 422 166 708, Email: james_AT_rcpt.to
> PLUG President 2011: http://www.plug.org.au
> _______________________________________________
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> http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
> PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
>