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Hello PLUG,<br>
<br>
<span class="st"><i>I made this email longer than usual because I
lack the time to make it shorter</i> -- </span><span class="st">Blaise
Pascal (<i>mostly</i>).</span><br>
<br>
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 <i><b>around 15 bodies</b></i> 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.<br>
<br>
With further good news, I can report that PLUG's current financial
membership total has hit <b>70 paid up members</b>, 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!<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
We're getting closer to our <b>Rusty Russell</b> 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 <b>discussion panel</b>
as well, debating the <i><b>State and Future of Linux & Open
Source in Australia</b></i>. 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 <b>pizza order</b><i><b> </b></i>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 <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tickets@plug.org.au">tickets@plug.org.au</a>
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:<br>
<ul>
<li>Get your own ticket now</li>
<li>Convince a friend to get their ticket now</li>
<li>Grab the poster from the web site (PDF available) and put it
up at work/school/uni</li>
<li>Think of whom you would like to see give a presentation next
time we fly a speaker in!</li>
<li>Help out on the AV project (subscribe to the separate mailing
list - see <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.plug.org.au/">http://lists.plug.org.au/</a>)<br>
</li>
</ul>
<br>
In other random news on PLUG....<br>
<br>
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 <b>PLUG T-Shirts</b>, and
possibly even proper shirts. If you're interested in this please
speak up!<br>
<br>
We ran a poll around people at the last meeting (and on our <i>Facebook
</i>group) and have settled on running a
summer/end-of-year/Christmas/whatever <b>BBQ</b> in early December
(at this stage, Sunday 4th Dec); its in the PLUG calendar. More
details closer to the date.<br>
<br>
We have a talk by Greg Orange schedule for September on <b>clustered
file systems</b>; 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 <b>drink</b>. I'm already starting thinking of next
years <b>Quiz Night</b>; 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!<br>
<br>
<b>Software Freedom Day</b> is coming up in September, and thus far
no one has been forthcoming in coordinating PLUGs involvement. As
such, sadly PLUG has <b>no solid plans</b>. 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!<br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
<b>Committee meeting is next Monday night at 7:30pm AWST</b> --
online on IRC (#plug on irc.plug.org.au) and Mumble
(mumble.plug.org.au). <b>You're welcome to attend and listen in,
and contribute your ideas, or volunteer to help out.</b> 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).<br>
<br>
I could continue, but that's probably enough for now. :)<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<br>
James<br>
<br>
<br>
* This is in exchange for UWA hosting this event in their lecture
theatre; Uni CS/IT students <b>STILL NEED TO EMAIL</b> to get a
ticket. Proof of enrollment will be required on the night.<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<em>Mobile:</em> +61 422 166 708, <em>Email:</em>
james_AT_rcpt.to<br>
PLUG President 2011: <a href="http//www.plug.org.au">http://www.plug.org.au</a></div>
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