[plug] PLUG News - Thanks to Greg - LCA registrations open, and more

Wed Sep 14 11:29:32 WST 2011

So, Rusty is not going to talk about IP Tables for an hour and tell us all about them?
Fred

--- On Wed, 14/9/11, James Bromberger <james at rcpt.to> wrote:

From: James Bromberger <james at rcpt.to>
Subject: [plug] PLUG News - Thanks to Greg - LCA registrations open, and more
To: "Perth Linux User Group" <plug at plug.org.au>
Received: Wednesday, 14 September, 2011, 11:09 AM

    Hello all,

    Here's a round up of the news from last night's PLUG meeting at UCC
    at UWA. 

    Thanks

      First up, a big thank you to Greg Orange for giving us a
      tour of his experiences with HSM and the SGI solution he
      implemented last year.  We had about a dozen people at last
      night's meeting, which was streamed and recorded; the video file
      is pretty much ready - thanks to Euan, Jason and Michael we should
      have this available to view very shortly. Our continuing thanks to
      HostAway and Labyrinth Data for our co-lo & hosting.

    PayPal

    PLUG is almost set up with a PayPal account, thanks to Jason
    Nicholls. This will mean that PLUG will be able to accept funds by
    PayPal, and by credit card. PLUG gets charged around 1.3% of each
    transaction, so our preference will still be for direct deposit, but
    the option is there for those who find this more convenient. Its
    been a lot of hassle to get the account set up for the organisation
    (unlike for an individual), so thanks to Jason for the work on this.

    Shirts

    Jason has also organised a dozen PLUG shirts (shirts with
    collar, buttons, not T-Shirts) that we hope to have by the end of
    the month. These are only produced in units of 12 shirts; most
    of this first batch has been sold, but we'll get more made up if
    there's interest, as well as looking at a T-Shirt option. Contact
    committee (committee_AT_plug.org.au).

    Membership

    PLUG membership now stands at 72. Membership is $20/year
    full, and $10/year concession (student, pensioner, etc). 

    PLUG in the Pub

    Our next pub meet social is on Monday 26th of September -
    just under 2 weeks away - at the Moon & Six Pence. We've got
    some visitors from IBM coming along who would like to talk to anyone
    looking to take a product or project to market and would like to
    work with IBM to do so. IBM will be buying some drinks on
    the night for everyone who turns up. Since I can't drink all their
    budget by myself, please come along and help me! This is for
    anyone/everyone to attend, you don't have to have a project, just
    come and have a drink. ;)

    Rusty

    As you know (!) we have Rusty Russell with us in a month's
    time to give a talk. For those not familiar, Rusty is an Adelaide
    based Linux kernel developer and open source contributor who wrote
    the ipchains and iptables firewall implementations in the kernel, as
    well as the lguest virtualisation system, and fast user mutexes
    (futex). He also started the Australian national Linux conference,
    now known as Linux.Conf.au. This is the first
      time we're flying a speaker to Perth explicitly to speak to
    PLUG, which is why there's a charge this time for attending: $20 for
    members, and $50 for non-members; all University computer science/IT
    students get FREE admission. However, this is for tickets booked and
    paid for in advance; on the night door tickets are $50 for
      EVERYONE. Please help us to get numbers right by booking in
    advance. There is a hard limit of 100 in the venue. Email
      tickets_AT_plug.org.au to get your ticket!

    So, what's Rusty going to talk about. Hot off the email, here's what
    he'd like to tell you:

    Coding: Let's Have Fun!

        It's hard to describe the joy of coding, if you haven't
        experienced it, but in this talk will try to capture some of
        it.  Free/Open Source lets us remove the cruft which forecloses
        on the joy of coding: seize this chance!

        I'll talk about some of my favourite projects over the last 15
        years of Free Software coding: what I did, how much fun it was
        and some surprising results which came from it.  I'll also
        discuss some hard lessons learned about joyless coding, so you
        can avoid it.  There will also be a sneak peak from my upcoming
        linux.conf.au talk.

        There'll be some awesome code to delight us.  And if you're not
        a programmer we'll take you our journey and show you the moments
        of brilliance which keep us coding.

    The evening starts at 6:30pm on Tuesday 11th October at the UWA
    Geography and Geology Lecture Theatre #1 (Gentilli Theatre). Free
    parking in Staff (red) and Student (yellow) bays should start at UWA
    from 5pm, and car parks 18 and 20 accessed from Fairway are probably
    the closest parking (http://www.parking.uwa.edu.au/). We're planning
    on having Rusty give a talk for an hour, and then having an
    intermission with Pizza delivered, and then returning to the theatre
    for a panel discussion/debate with the audience on "The State and
      Future of Linux & Open Source in Australia". We have three
    guests for this:  Rusty (obviously), Dr Chris McDonald from the UWA
    Department of Computer Science, and Assistant Professor Robert
    Cunningham from the Law School who specialises in Intellectual
    Property and open source licensing.

    Maps of UWA campus are at http://maps.uwa.edu.au/. 

    Please tell your friends and colleagues about this. There's a poster
    on the PLUG Events page to print out and put up where other will see
    it. 

    This event should be streamed live online from our usual icecast
    server for those who just can't make it on the night  (and recorded
    for later playback). Your remote participation and feedback via IRC
    during the event will be relayed to the venue -- however, nothing
    beats being there in the room so grab a ticket and come along! ;)

    We'll be emailing ticket holders in the next few weeks to reconfirm
    the details for the night.

    Linux.conf.au

    Talking of the "father" of Linux.conf.au (LCA,
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux.conf.au), the schedule
      has just come out for the January 2012 installation of this
    event, being held in Ballarat, Victoria (an hour outside Melbourne)
    January 16 - 20. And in the last few hours, Early bird (read
      "discount") registrations have opened, so you can now book
    your ticket! For those not familar with LCA, one of the three main
    world-wide grass-roots open source conferences. If you see the
    Wikipedia article, there's a picture of the 2003 conference held
    here in Perth with the pizza boxes we had for lunch that day (and
    the penguin road sign banner that now hangs in the UCC at UWA).

    Future Talks

    We have the following talks lined up in the calendar after Rusty in
    September

      Nov: Open Source Manufacturing, by Daniel Harmsworth
      Dec: Mon-keytest GUI testing, by John McCabe-Dansted
      Jan: PLUG AGM (and elections)
      Feb: Moodle CMS, by Moodle creator Martin Dougiamas 
      Mar: possible NBN discussion/panel

    The venues for these are up in the air; if you'd like to host host
    around 30 - 40 people in a venue with enough space and a DSL (or
    better) net connection then please let the committee know (committee_AT_plug.org.au).
    We've been very grateful to the UCC at UWA for hosting us, and other
    organisations, but we're constantly looking for somewhere to
    congregate (that's free). Unfortunately community halls charge more
    than we can afford, and normally don't have net access (for
    streaming), and commercial venues are also more than we can afford
    on a monthly basis.

    PLUG is trying to plan talks at least 3 months out so you can see
    whats happening. I'm hoping this is helping you. As always, the PLUG
    presentations are on the second Tuesday of the month; and (with the
    exception of the Rusty talk next month) we're now starting at 7pm
    dur to popular demand (we've trid 7:30, and it was too late, and it
    seemed 6:30 was a little too early).

    Thank you to everyone who volunteers to give a talk; if you have a
    talk you'd like to give on your experiences, or a project you've
    been working on, please let us know and we'll schedule you. Giving a
    PLUG talk is a great first step to talking at other conferences.
    We're also looking for short 5 minute "lightning talks" you'd like
    to give after the main presenter on any time -- just let us know.

    Also, if the Rusty event is the success we're seeing it become, then
    we'd like to get your input of whom else we should bring to Perth to
    give a talk. Got a favourite developer or open source contributor
    that you'd like to chat with? Let committee know, and we'll contact
    them and see if they are interested in coming.

    Software Freedom Day

    Software Freedom Day is a world-wide day to promote Free and Open
    Source software. See http://softwarefreedomday.org/. It is this
    Saturday the 17th of September.  We've not had anyone want to
    co-ordinate PLUG's SFD activity this year, so we're not explicitly
    doing anything; however, 402 groups world-wide are (none in Perth; 6
    groups across Vic, NSW and Tas; 5 groups in NZ). 

    Summer BBQ

    We've been thinking of what to do for members for the end of the
    year, and we've settled on a BBQ in Kings Park on Sunday 4th of
    December at the Synergy Playground (Zamia Cafe) from around noon (or
    a bit before). There's several public BBQs there, so we'll drag
    along a couple of eskis, some sausages, buns, etc, and hang out for
    a bit. BYO drinks - indeed, bring a large bottle to share with
    others. We need a volunteer who will gather the number of people
      coming so we can get enough food - please let us know if you can
      help. Bring your partner and any offspring you have, plus a
    chair(s), rug, sunscreen, etc.

    AV Crew

    The AV crew managed to get set up and operational in 45 minutes last
    night. We still need bodies to help out with camera operation,
    plugging kit together and taking it apart, or any other part of
    stage managing you'd like to help out with (lighting, set, etc).
    Please subscribe to the AV mailing list and speak up
    (http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/av).

    Volunteers needed

      Give a talk!
      Give a lightning talk (5 mins or less)!!
      Host a PLUG meeting/volunteer a venue (with DSL or better
        link, suitable for around 30-40 people)
      Start a PLUG project
      Organise numbers for the Summer BBQ
      Co-ordinate and schedule PLUG talks
      Help on the AV crew
      Media & advertising relations (draft/send press releases,
        get PLUG more well known)
      Employment/jobs mailing list manager - for Linux & Open
        Source related roles across WA (posting policy, possibly
        moderated with approvals)
      Quiz night 2012 - lets get prepared - if you liked it this
        year, help run it next year!

      Anything else that you can think of!

    Committee Meeting

    PLUG committee meets twice a month; once after the main PLUG
    presentation, and then 2 - 3 weeks later on-line using Mumble to
    voice chat (mumble.plug.org.au) and IRC (#plug on irc.plug.org.au).
    You're welcome to attend either meeting. It's in the PLUG calendar
    (see the PLUG web site). A big thanks to the committee for taking
    this time from to help PLUG, and everyone else who comes along to
    give their input (and to volunteer to take on a project/role!).

        Facebook & Calendar

      PLUG is on Facebook (Perth Linux Users Group, PLUG);
    if you happen to use this then please "like" the page. The PLUG
    Events calendar on Google Calendar can be imported into your own
    ICAL aware calendar (such as Thunderbird with Lightning & Google
    Calendar provider; see the events page on the PLUG web site).

    Feedback

    Your feedback to committee (or me) is essential. If you like what
    we're doing, let us know. If you have suggestions for something
    else, let us know. If you don't like something, well, something
      something something - OK, ok, let us know! ;)

    Avast; its nearly September the 19th

    A reminder that Talk Like a Pirrrrate day be fast aproachin' on
    Monday. See http://www.talklikeapirate.com/.

    That's rather long. Thanks to everyone who is helping make PLUG
    interesting and useful.

      James

    -- 

      Mobile: +61 422 166 708, Email:
      james_AT_rcpt.to

      PLUG President 2011: http://www.plug.org.au

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________
PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
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