Minutes 2007-11-27

We began talking about the direction we want to take the LUG

We have specifically discussed updating the web site to add a few new features:
 * Web forums
 * Wiki (probably
 * "planet" blog aggregator
 * An official STNY LUG blog (wordpress?)
 * "ical"&mdash;see the "STNYLUG mtgs" calendar in Google public calendars or the ical feed
 * Some reference to a canonical IRC channel
 * Link to BC BUG, the Broome County BSD User Group
 * Link to STNY LUG facebook group
 * We need a logo!
 * Domain name? stnylug.org? ttlug.org?
 * Include a Google map with at least the meeting location

Also, we tried to decide our goals to direct this process:
 * Establish Online Presence (using quick to set up off-the-shelf components for collaboration)
 * Establish/Grow Community
 * Extend Meetings Online
 * Help Each Other Out!

Some discussion/debate comparing the appeal of wikis versus forums for technical help remained unresolved... and yes, we discussed some Linux after all this. There was no debate about which distro is the best, whether to allow propriety drivers on our machines at all, GPLv3, and no attempt to establish that Linux is just the kernel. Instead we exchanged tips about having more than one desktop environment, Java-based text editors, and methods for secure remote logins and file sharing.

Next Meeting
4th Tuesday of January (Room 220B, Downtown Center)

Actions to be taken prior to meeting:
 * Bill to present on VMware (potentially placing brief guide on wiki)
 * Patrick to present on using Knoppix with thumb drive to hold personal/portable data
 * Brent and Ralph to install and set up Mediawiki on Brent's server space (url to be announced on STNY LUG list)
 * Thorsten to be made 'gatekeeper' for the wiki (though wiki will likely initially allow anonymous edits)
 * Ralph to contact Rick (Dan? others of the 'old guard attendees') re: url to be used for this entity's online presence (so as not to step on toes or fragment STNYLUG group unnecessarily)
 * Thorsten and Ralph to add pages on wiki that might make good quick guides
 * All others - to simply pay attention to what's put online and to provide feedback and (even-better) contributions to what could become a reasonably active/dynamic online presence.

Other suggestions (what seem to be favorites among some attendees) for easy to add dynamic content:
 * del.icio.us account tagged with stnylug and linux (plus more specific tags) to allow the site design to have a cloud tag of resources our group finds interesting
 * planet (like planetgnome and planetmozilla)... for the aggregation of RSS feeds/blogs

Quick howto documents should be written for each component added to the dynamic site.