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Hello all,<br>
<br>
Here's a round up of the news from last night's PLUG meeting at UCC
at UWA. <br>
<br>
<p><u><b>Thanks</b></u><br>
First up, a big <b>thank you to Greg Orange</b> 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.<br>
<br>
</p>
<u><b>PayPal</b></u><br>
PLUG is almost set up with a <b>PayPal account</b>, 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.<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Shirts</b></u><br>
Jason has also organised a dozen <b>PLUG shirts</b> (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; <i>most</i>
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 (<i>committee_AT_plug.org.au</i>).<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Membership</b></u><br>
PLUG membership now stands at <b>72</b>. Membership is $20/year
full, and $10/year concession (student, pensioner, etc). <br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>PLUG in the Pub</b></u><br>
Our next pub meet social is on <b>Monday 26th of September </b>-
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. <b>IBM will be buying some drinks </b>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. ;)<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Rusty</b></u><br>
As you know (!) we have <b>Rusty Russell</b> 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 <i><b>Linux.Conf.au</b></i>. This is the <b>first
time we're flying a speaker to Perth</b> 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; <b>on the night door tickets are $50 for
EVERYONE</b>. Please help us to get numbers right by booking in
advance. There is a hard limit of 100 in the venue. <b>Email
tickets_AT_plug.org.au to get your ticket</b>!<br>
<br>
<br>
So, what's Rusty going to talk about. Hot off the email, here's what
he'd like to tell you:<br>
<blockquote><b>Coding: Let's Have Fun!<br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.</b><br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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 (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.parking.uwa.edu.au/">http://www.parking.uwa.edu.au/</a>). 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 "<b>The State and
Future of Linux & Open Source in Australia</b>". 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.<br>
<br>
Maps of UWA campus are at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://maps.uwa.edu.au/">http://maps.uwa.edu.au/</a>. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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! ;)<br>
<br>
We'll be emailing ticket holders in the next few weeks to reconfirm
the details for the night.<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Linux.conf.au</b></u><br>
Talking of the "father" of Linux.conf.au (<i>LCA,
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux.conf.au">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux.conf.au</a></i>), the <b>schedule
has just come out</b> 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, <b>Early bird (read
"discount") registrations have opened</b>, 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).<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Future Talks</b></u><br>
We have the following talks lined up in the calendar after Rusty in
September<br>
<ul>
<li>Nov: Open Source Manufacturing, by Daniel Harmsworth</li>
<li>Dec: Mon-keytest GUI testing, by John McCabe-Dansted</li>
<li>Jan: PLUG AGM (and elections)</li>
<li>Feb: Moodle CMS, by Moodle creator Martin Dougiamas </li>
<li>Mar: possible NBN discussion/panel</li>
</ul>
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 (<i>committee_AT_plug.org.au</i>).
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.<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Software Freedom Day</b></u><br>
Software Freedom Day is a world-wide day to promote Free and Open
Source software. See <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://softwarefreedomday.org/">http://softwarefreedomday.org/</a>. 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). <br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Summer BBQ</b></u><br>
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. <b>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</b>. Bring your partner and any offspring you have, plus a
chair(s), rug, sunscreen, etc.<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>AV Crew</b></u><br>
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
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/av">http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/av</a>).<br>
<u><b></b></u><br>
<br>
<u><b>Volunteers needed</b></u><br>
<ul>
<li>Give a talk!</li>
<li>Give a lightning talk (5 mins or less)!!</li>
<li>Host a PLUG meeting/volunteer a venue (with DSL or better
link, suitable for around 30-40 people)</li>
<li>Start a PLUG project</li>
<li>Organise numbers for the Summer BBQ</li>
<li>Co-ordinate and schedule PLUG talks</li>
<li>Help on the AV crew</li>
<li>Media & advertising relations (draft/send press releases,
get PLUG more well known)</li>
<li>Employment/jobs mailing list manager - for Linux & Open
Source related roles across WA (posting policy, possibly
moderated with approvals)</li>
<li>Quiz night 2012 - lets get prepared - if you liked it this
year, help run it next year!<br>
</li>
<li>Anything else that you can think of!<br>
</li>
</ul>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Committee Meeting</b></u><br>
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!).<br>
<u><b><br>
<br>
Facebook & Calendar<br>
</b></u>PLUG is on Facebook (<span class="profileName fn
ginormousProfileName fwb"><i>Perth Linux Users Group, PLUG</i>)</span>;
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).<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Feedback</b></u><br>
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, <i>something
something something</i> - OK, ok, let us know! ;)<br>
<br>
<br>
<u><b>Avast; its nearly September the 19th</b></u><br>
A reminder that Talk Like a Pirrrrate day be fast aproachin' on
Monday. See <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.talklikeapirate.com/">http://www.talklikeapirate.com/</a>.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
That's rather long. Thanks to everyone who is helping make PLUG
interesting and useful.<br>
<br>
James<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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