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.

Thank you.

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 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.

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.

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

Carpooling

• Your name/location here