Meeting-20111112

WPLUG will have a General User Meeting and presentation on Saturday, November 12, 2011, starting at 2pm at the Wilkins School Community Center.

Schedule for the Day

1:30pm - Doors open, set up
2:00pm - Business Meeting starts, elections
2:30pm - Featured Presentation
3:30pm - Meeting ends, everyone out. Some of us may go to D's 6pack for beer and dogs.

Election

At this meeting, we will elect the WPLUG Board of Directors for 2011-2012.

Votes may be cast by mail or in person at the meeting. Your vote must be received before the polls close to be counted, so show up by 2:00pm to be sure you get to cast yours.

The ballot for this election has been provided to the membership and can be downloaded from the wiki. Blank ballots will also be available at the meeting. Detailed instructions for voting are given at Election Instructions.

Those who were nominated at the October 8, 2011 nominations meeting and have agreed to be candidates are (in alphabetical order):

• Patrick Barron
• Judi Galardi
• Terry Golightly
• Michael Loomis
• Joseph Prostko
• Jacob Skiba

Note:

• Greg Alheid was nominated but has declined.

Meet the Candidates

There will be a special "meet the candidates" session in the WPLUG IRC channel (irc.freenode.net, channel #wplug) on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 from 7-8pm. We encourage all members to attend and ask questions of the candidates.

Candidate Statements

Judi Galardi

I will call 911 if I am physically assaulted in any way at any more meetings. I suggest if anyone else has the same problem that they do the same. There is no place for violence.

When I suggested that we provide computers for needy people here, Bethlynn helped to get Penguins-Care involved with Dave Sevick, I also encouraged Johnny Q at Goodwill Computer store to help and people at EECM (East End Cooperative Ministries). I represent Penguins-Care at the Homeless Children's Fund (which connected us with Hearth and other women's/family shelters). I plan events keeping in mind that people need walking, driving/parking and/or bus transportation directions and we need a private room w/ wireless (usually). I did a lot to plan the picnic and look forward to planning other meetings and events.

I am not a technical person--I mostly worked with open office. I am not interested in being treasurer or anything else. Director at Large where I belong. I find places where we can help or get new people to join us. I also try to find other outlets to make people aware of what we do.

I will not be available for the Q and A this Wednesday.

Patrick Barron

I've been involved with technology for almost as long as I can remember. The first computer I ever used was an HP timesharing system, dialed in at 110 baud on a Teletype with a paper tape reader, way back in 1978... I've been involved with open source software since before people even called it that, having "cut my open source teeth" on a PDP-11 running Seventh Edition Unix (open source, but sadly, not "free"...).

I've hung out sort of "on the fringes" of WPLUG for a very long time, and have benefited in many ways from even that minimal participation. I joined WPLUG as a full fledged member about two years ago, because I wanted to give back at least a little (in the form of membership dues) to an organization that I've derived so much benefit from. But now, I think it's time for me to give back a little more, by offering my services as a member of the WPLUG Board for the upcoming year.

If I recall correctly, as of the last General User Meeting, there were 27 dues paying members of WPLUG. In a region with such a vibrant technical community, it surprises me (and saddens me, a little) that this number is so low, particularly since WPLUG has existed for such a long time now. Part of this is, I think, an "outreach" issue, though judging from the level of partcipation on WPLUG's mailing lists, there are certainly many people who are aware of WPLUG and benefit from it who are not dues paying members. I will admit that part of the reason I didn't join as a member before I did was a lack of real, tangible benefits from being a full fledged, dues paying member of the organization. If I am elected to the WPLUG Board, this is something I hope to help change.

In fact, I've reviewed the WPLUG Board 2007 Goals and WPLUG Board 2008 Goals, and it seems that the "tangible benefits" issue had been previously acknowledged. The goals published by these previous WPLUG Boards actually had a lot of good ideas, many of which were never (to my knowledge) completed. Since 2008, the WPLUG Board has not published a substantial set of updated goals, and the idea of having a long-term plan seems to have fallen by the wayside. I would very much like to see WPLUG revive the long-term plan and make progress on some of the ideas in the previous plans that have not yet been implemented.

Terry Golightly

I have been active with computers since the mid 1980s. I was a Win95/Dos user until 1997 when this funny named distribution call Mandrake Linux came on the scene. Upgrades generally broke libraries, but with a little help from the user's mailing list, I could fix it in a relatively short period of time. Whoa, this was earth shaking to me. A community of user's supporting each other. Making computing easier and fun at the same time. Some time later I heard of this group WPLUG. Wow! a user's group for Linux users. I may have attended a meeting or two at CMU some years back and then didn't become active until the past 2 years. It somehow didn't seem welcoming. Very techy overly geeky. Don't get me wrong, I like geeky and techy. However, I don't believe that you can really be a thriving user's group with your focus on a narrow group of users:

Those who already are in the know, in short: THE CHOIR. The choir is nice, is good , we know the choir we are the Choir! Always a solid backbone to rely on. But, do we necessarily do a good job of bring in the uninitiated to our world. Becoming a Linux/FOSS user.

In the past year, as Vice Chair I have attempted with limited success (Software Freedom Day) to promote Linux/FOSS to the general public. We could use a less formal approach to our meetings. Perhaps software demonstration and/or a sit around where we demo a web site on an overhead, or show off our our latest gadget. Techie discussions led by local (and national) industry leaders will and should always be our bread and butter. The only thing in our way is the ability of us to give our time, effort, ideas.

I am now gainfully employed now and will have less free time to share with the group. Which means it takes more than one candidate for board to be able to get people motivated. We need to get more members interested and interested parties to serve on our committees. Even if it is only for chat sessions on the irc channel. Getting together for weekly or monthly chat sessions might be a start.

Spread the load share the idea: Linux as an alternative to M$/Apple. We have a choice, now how can we show Western Pa. users that they also have a choice. A choice that is worth making. That's the challenge and that's the agenda I'd like to promote as a Board member of your WPLUG.

Candidate's Name

Enter a paragraph or two expressing your agenda for the coming year.

Candidate's Name

Enter a paragraph or two expressing your agenda for the coming year.

Candidate's Name

Enter a paragraph or two expressing your agenda for the coming year.

Speaker/Presentation

Speaker: Don Vosburg of SUSE

Title: openSUSE - Have a lot of fun!

Meeting Minutes

To be added.

Meeting Staff

If you would like to volunteer to assist with this meeting, please add your name to one or more of the categories below.

• Host: Terry Golightly
• Co-Host: Your name here
• Donuts/Bagels: Your name here
• Setup: Terry Golightly, Your name here
• Clean Up: Vance Kochenderfer, Your name here

Carpooling

• Your name/location here