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Hello all,<br>
<br>
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: <br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.plug.org.au/video/2011/2011-11-08-Artifactory.x264-28-slower.mp4"
target="_blank">http://www.plug.org.au/video/2011/2011-11-08-Artifactory.x264-28-slower.mp4</a><br>
<br>
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...).<br>
<br>
Anyway, on to the news and events that were mentioned on Tuesday
just gone and the last few days since...<br>
<br>
<b>AGM & Elections 2012</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.plug.org.au/members/">https://www.plug.org.au/members/</a>), 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.<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>PLUG Calendar SNAFU</b><br>
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...<br>
<br>
<b>PLUG in the Pub, Monday 28 November</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Summer BBQ, Sunday 4th December</b><br>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>December talk: Mon-KeyTest</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>January talk: the AGM</b><br>
It's not a talk, it's the AGM. Venue TBA.<br>
<br>
<b>January road trip: Linux.conf.au</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>February talk: Moodle</b><br>
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).<br>
<br>
<b>March: PLUG Quiz Night (PLUG in the Pub)</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Project: User Group Membership Management (UGMM)<br>
</b>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 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.plug.org.au/members/">https://www.plug.org.au/members/</a> 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!<br>
<br>
<b>Project: Audio/Video (AV)</b><br>
The AV project seeks to help PLUG in several ways:<br>
* Distribute the technical talks to members who cannot make the
meeting<br>
* Distribute the talk to potential new members or new Linux users<br>
* Help our presenters reach a global audience<br>
* Build a library of previous presentations for everyone<br>
* By using Open Source Software we help feedback to the projects
that we use (patches have been submitted!)<br>
* Training PLUG members in the production of live video streams
should a large Linux conference ever come to town again!<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
<b>Fly in a speaker for 2012</b><br>
With huge thanks to <i>Rusty Russell </i>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? <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://conf.linux.org.au/programme/schedule">https://conf.linux.org.au/programme/schedule</a><br>
<br>
<b>Membership</b><br>
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
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.plug.org.au/membership">https://www.plug.org.au/membership</a>. Surely $20 ($10) is not going to
break the bank, but it does give us a clear indication of your
support.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
James<br>
<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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