[plug] Presidents Report 2011

[Tim]

As I won't be able to attend physically tonights AGM, here is my
Presidents Report for the last year.

PLUG AGM 2011 - Presidents Report

As what seems a strange twist, again PLUG starts off this year with
the President unable to attend the AGM! Being President this last year
has been a strange yet rewarding role. Firstly, I'd like to thank the
rest of the Committee for the amazing job they have all done this year
in keeping things running, and not being afraid to get things done.

This year the Committee have started a number of things to bring
change to PLUG. This has included trying to work out PLUG's role in
the community, so that it may better server it's members. Sadly, our
member numbers have been dropping over the last few years, so
hopefully with renewed direction, PLUG will once again build up in
numbers. We currently have almost 340 subscribers to the main PLUG
mailing lists, yet less than 30 financial members.

On the technical side of things this year, we have lost 2 servers and
gained a virtual one. un.plug.org.au was finally setup to be the new
main server, and shortly after the migration of the membership
database was completed, un suffered a hard drive failure. As shameless
is badly out of date, it was decided to accept Labyrinth Data's
gracious offer for a basic level VPS to run essential services.
Initially this was just the mailing lists, but has been extended to
the website and also DNS as spark appears to have died. We hope to
migrate the membership database sometime in the next month as well, so
that shameless can be rebuilt and setup as the members server. Due to
these server issues, PLUG members have not had shell accounts, or mail
services properly functioning for a number of months now. It is
planned to have these services restored eventually, however essential
services have been priority. A big thankyou to everyone that has
helped with the setup of the servers, and the migration of
information.

>From what I have seen of the current committee, PLUG is in for a year
of change if they continue to be part of the committee or assist the
new committee. In the last few months, much work has happened to
revive PLUG, and to get things done. They have been a very active
group of people, and I hope all PLUG members, and list subscribes
appreciate all the work that they have been doing behind the scenes.
Due to my move back to QLD, I will not be nominating for a committee
position this year. I will continue to stay involved with PLUG as much
as possible. Thanks to Patrick getting better spam filtering
happening, list moderation hasn't been as big an issue any more, which
has allowed more time to be spent on server admin work.

I hope to see PLUG grow again this year, and support the discussions
of providing services aimed at new Linux users, as well as veteran
Linux users. Good luck to the new committee, we have started the
process of change and will continue to assist the new committee with
continue the change.

Tim White

-- 
Timothy White - Somewhere in Australia