[plug] Hello World.

[James Bromberger]

Dear PLUG,

Thank you to everyone who turned up on Tuesday night to the /PLUG 2011
Annual General Meeting/; AGMs are typically pretty dry and not much fun,
but I hope you enjoyed it. We had a decent turn out which was lovely to
see; it was also nice to catch up with a few old friends whom I haven't
seen for a number of years!

The new committee is currently trying to sort itself out; there will be
a committee meeting on Monday 17th January 2011 from 7:30pm AWST, on IRC
(#plug on irc.plug.org.au) and you're welcome to pop in to the channel
if you'd like to listen in or contribute.

I'd like to thank the previous committee for their time and effort. I
know it has been a difficult year for PLUG; the official membership
numbers reflect this. There are a lot of people lurking on this mailing
list who I would encourage to feel good about supporting PLUG by
becoming a financial member. $10/year is a nominal membership fee, but
without processing a payment for you, we cannot (legally, under the
relevant Act) recognise you as a member. Without recognised membership,
PLUG cannot survive. I hope we (meaning, you reading this, the
committee, and the entire membership) can instigate some initiatives
that give PLUG fresh life.


    Activities

If everyone comes and puts their $10 in the "pot", we have a new
challenge; what do we do with the money? It's no good sitting in the
bank earning pretty much no interest. We need ideas, people. No,
transferring it all to your Cayman Island account is not feasible,
sorry. We're looking for ideas that make PLUG do what *YOU *would like
it to do. Here's some suggestions (they're just ideas at the moment):

    * Send a random (financial) member to LCA 2012, where ever it is;
      cover flights and accommodation. I think thiat paying a $10
      membership for the chance of this would be a pretty good return.
      Right now its a 1:30 chance of winning if we do it - but I'm
      hoping those odds will drop if everyone joins up!! :)
    * Bring interesting speakers in from over East or overseas. We'd
      cover cost, and possibly billet the speaker at one of our
      collective houses. Who would you like to speak to? Tridge? Rusty?
      JDub? Pia? Someone from laptop.org.au (OLPC)? Others - please tell us!
    * Run an install fest? Who can we appoint as the person to run this?
      You'll need to find a suitable venue. We could possibly supply drinks?
    * Run a BBQ?
    * Run a pub meet (possibly monthly)? That is... a drink and a chat.
      How hard is that. Just chose a pub with good transport options
      (preferably options so that people have a chance to get home
      without driving
    * Help a charity/school/whatever - there are may out there that
      don't have much in the way of tech skills, so a weekend of setting
      something up, or developing some LAMP/Java/whatever software could
      be invaluable to them??


Here's where *I'd like to get your suggestions, and offers to RUN
something*. The PLUG community (all 340+ on the mailing list) covers a
wide spectrum of experience and expectations, and I would like to have
PLUG as a forum and facilitator for all of those sections of the
membership to participate in what they would like to do.  Please send
your suggestions to the committee; we can then put the more popular ones
on the web site and try and start a schedule to do some of them.

I've had some people jest about another LCA in Perth. Many of you will
remember the success we had in 2003. I know there was an effort a few
years ago which didn't proceed. Organising an LCA is a 2+ year long
project; I personally won't be leading that by myself, but if we have a
group of people who are interested in doing so, then step up and make
yourselves known. I will assist where possible.


    Representatives to other groups

There's a number of relationships with other groups that PLUG could
maintain in the open source community on a semi-official basis. We need
people to step up and liaise with these groups to represent PLUG, and
report back to PLUG. This includes Linux Australia, SAGE-AU, etc. If
you're a member of another group and would like to represent PLUG,
please email the committee (or me). For example, I am also currently
running Perth.pm, the Perth Perl Mongers (http://perth.pm.org/) - but
likewise an informal liaison to the Python group, Java, Port 80, etc,
could potentially also be worthwhile.


    Communications

PLUG's active mailing list has for many years been the main method of
disseminating information, but in the last week or so, the new
Drupal-driven web site has gone live (thanks to Tim). Hopefully this
will make publishing information as easy as possible. Already we have a
calendar published there so you can see details of meetings (you can
subscribe to the Google Calendar as well). I'd like to get a few more
people actively adding content to the web site - if you have a knack for
putting words together, and would like to help maintain the web site,
please let us know. You can sign up for a Drupal account on the web site
now, and then we can add editing permissions for you.

We have an IRC channel as mentioned above - "#plug" on irc.plug.org.au
(which is /irc.gimp.org/ for those that care about the details). You'll
normally find a few people idling around there, so feel free to join.


    Conclusion

In summary, here's my initial beg for volunteers:

    * 2-3 people to act as Webmaster and actively maintain the web
      content & events calendar.
    * 2 people or so to co-ordinate talks (and venue) for the year; I'd
      like to see a 4 months lead on confirmed talks if possible
    * 2 people or so to organise some social gatherings: pubs, BBQs,
      whatever
    * Other roles as above.... :)
    * Suggestions for anything else

Our next meeting on *Tuesday 8th Feb *(the rule remains "2nd Tuesday of
the month") is going to be a wrap up/report on LCA; we've asked those
members who are going to take photos and gather interesting info (spare
hand outs??) and bring this back to review with everyone else.

As always, I and the rest of the committee are here to help you make
PLUG into what you would like. You can call my mobile (number below,
daylight hours preferred of course), or email me directly. I am trying
to be at every PLUG meeting (haven't missed any now since August 2010).

  James
(/El Pres 2011/)

-- 

Mobile: +61 422 16 708, Email: james_AT_rcpt.to

-- 
Mobile: +61 422 16 708, Email: james_AT_rcpt.to

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