[plug] Artifactory Talk; Elections 2012; Events

[James Bromberger]

Hello all,

After a slightly longer delay than normal (due to me), the video from
last Tuesday's talk given by Daniel Harmsworth on Open Source and
Hardware Manufacturing, presented at Artifactory, is now available at:

http://www.plug.org.au/video/2011/2011-11-08-Artifactory.x264-28-slower.mp4

It's a 150 MB download. Many thanks to Euan and Michael for audio and
camera work (and Michael for salvaging two of our video capture boxes by
replacing motherboards...).

Anyway, on to the news and events that were mentioned on Tuesday just
gone and the last few days since...

*AGM & Elections 2012*
You may have seen earlier this week notice about nominations for the
2012 committee from our Secretary, Mr Peter Lyons. With just on two
months until our AGM in January (formal notice to be given no later than
28 days in advance; it is anticipated it will be on January 13th), we've
been reading through our constitution and are highlighting the election
process for you. Officially nominations can be given to the Secretary in
writing (yes, that includes email) no later than 28 days in advance of
the AGM, at which time the Secretary will publish nominations. If no
nominations are submitted for a given position, THEN (and only then)
nominations will be selected from the meeting.

This means if you'd like to help PLUG by standing for a position on the
committee, you need to ensure your membership is current
(https://www.plug.org.au/members/), and then get your nomination in (you
can nominate yourself, I believe). If you're nominating someone else,
please CC that person in your nomination email so they can confirm
acceptance of the nomination.

Again according to our current Constitution, we have 4 positions, and
have moved to co-opt a number of Ordinary Committee Members (OCMs;
without office).

This early notice (in November) is in order to give you as much notice
of events as possible. The Committee generally meets face-to-face once
per month (after the tech talk), and then online two weeks later (these
days we're using Mumble for a multi-way real time voice chat, but some
chat also happens on IRC as well).

PLUG has had a strong resurgence in 2011 (thanks to all who have
helped), and I strongly encourage any member who has enjoyed this to put
their nomination forward for any -- or all -- positions to continue to
help us organise interesting Linux/Open Source/Tech related events and
projects. Of course, you don't have to be on the PLUG committee to help
organise an event: just volunteer to do something!



*PLUG Calendar SNAFU*
The calendar on the PLUG page is still broken; we're trying to work out
why this happened, so please bear with us. Hence I am re-iterating the
upcoming events in this email...

*PLUG in the Pub, Monday 28 November*
Time for another social at The Moon & Six Pence (Murray St) on Monday
28th. We'll be in the pub from around 6:30pm for a few drinks and some
grub. Purely a social meet up, open to all.Last month we had about 10
members share the evening having a lively discussion over a brew; come
and join in if you're near enough to the city.

*Summer BBQ, Sunday 4th December*
Its the end of the year, it's summer, it's nearly the end of the 2011
Committee term, and with numerous vacations and festivities occurring,
its an excuse for a casual BBQ in Kings Park. Bring along your
long-suffering partners (who don't necessarily understand what Open
Source is), your kids (who may not even be know what IT is), and any
friends; PLUG will grab some sausages and rolls, but bring along
anything else you'd like to BBQ, and BYO drinks.

*December talk: Mon-KeyTest*
John McCabe-Danstead is giving a talk in December on Mon-KeyTest, his
GUI testing software. We haven't got a venue for this sorted yet, so
stay tuned. As usual, the AV crew will be trying to record and
live-stream this; we'd love feedback from those who watch live, and from
those that download later.

*January talk: the AGM*
It's not a talk, it's the AGM. Venue TBA.

*January road trip: Linux.conf.au*
A bunch of members are travelling to Linux.conf.au, the national Linux
conference, being held in Ballarat, Victoria Jan 15 - 20. There's no
formal PLUG group going, but if you're looking for someone to travel
with, speak up and see if you're on the same flight(s) as others.

*February talk: Moodle*
Moodle is a Course Management System; its core supporting company,
Moodle.com, is based in Perth, and MD Martin Dougiamas is coming to talk
to us. This will be at Challenger Tafe in Fremantle (thanks to Daniel
for organising this one).

*March: PLUG Quiz Night (PLUG in the Pub)*
This is the second time around for the PLUG Linux & Open Source themed
Quiz. Grab a group of friends to win some prizes (thanks to all who have
already agreed to donate prizes; more welcome). This will be at the Moon
& Six Pence once again.

*Project: User Group Membership Management (UGMM)
*This has been a reworking of the PLUG memership database and account
login information for our user shell server, Shameless. All members can
log into https://www.plug.org.au/members/ to enable their shell account.
and then SSH into shameless.plug.org.au.  The goal of UGMM is to make a
generic engine that can process membership and prefernces for any user
group (not just a LUG). Sign up to the UGMM mailing list and ask questions!

*Project: Audio/Video (AV)*
The AV project seeks to help PLUG in several ways:
* Distribute the technical talks to members who cannot make the meeting
* Distribute the talk to potential new members or new Linux users
* Help our presenters reach a global audience
* Build a library of previous presentations for everyone
* By using Open Source Software we help feedback to the projects that we
use (patches have been submitted!)
* Training PLUG members in the production of live video streams should a
large Linux conference ever come to town again!

PLUG has applied for a LotteryWest grant for the AV project to replace
the broken PCs with laptops, obtain cameras and  other equipment. Its
taken a long time, but we're hoping funding will come through in
December. This is the first time that PLUG has applied for funding, and
it may well be the start of more! If you'd like to help with the AV
crew, sign up to the AV mailing list and let people know. We're afte
amateur directors, camera operators, audio techs, heck, if you want to
play with lighting or anything else then come along and play! The
current equipment is mostly donated, and is basically a portable TV
studio (thanks to dvswitch).

*Fly in a speaker for 2012*
With huge thanks to /Rusty Russell /for coming to Perth in October and
generously refusing to accept our funds for his flight and expenses (and
to Jeremy Kerr for billeting him), we have to find out next speaker.
Other than asking about Tridge (whom I will ask again in January),
there's very few other suggestions. Perhaps read the LCA 2012 schedule
and see if there are people you'd like to see come to Perth?
https://conf.linux.org.au/programme/schedule

*Membership*
We've got >350 people on the mailinglist, but only 74 members. Those of
you lurking, please throw $20 ($10 concession) at PLUG as a thank you
for hosting the mailing list, and to help us continue to carry out
activities like the above. You can transfer your membership fee by
direct deposit and register on-line now at
https://www.plug.org.au/membership. Surely $20 ($10) is not going to
break the bank, but it does give us a clear indication of your support.



  James

-- 
/Mobile:/ +61 422 166 708, /Email:/ james_AT_rcpt.to
PLUG President 2011: http://www.plug.org.au <http//www.plug.org.au>
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