Meeting-2008Nominations

WPLUG will have a General User Meeting and presentation on Saturday, September 13th, starting at 10am on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, CMU Newell Simon Hall 3002.

An important item to be addressed at the business meeting is nominations for the WPLUG Board of Directors. The new Board will be elected at the October meeting. Members are encouraged to nominate individuals (yes, you can nominate yourself!) who they think would help WPLUG improve. Qualifications for the Board are listed in section 6.4 of the bylaws.

Schedule for the Day

9:30am - Setup
10:00am - Doors Open
10:30am - Business Meeting - Nominations
11:00am - Featured Presentation
12:30pm - Break for Lunch
2:00pm - Finish clean up, everyone out

Speaker/Presentation

Patrick Wagstrom, a Ph.D. candidate in the Carnegie Mellon University Engineering and Public Policy department, will speak on the subject of his thesis research - Eclipse: What you can learn from a community that is more than an IDE.

Java and C developers are familiar with Eclipse as a robust development environment, but it's actually much more. Eclipse has grown into a robust framework for developing applications on desktops, servers, and the web thanks to more than 180 companies and 800+ developers contributing to 90+ projects. This talk highlights some of the projects in Eclipse that you may not be as familiar with and discusses how your project can excel thanks to lessons learned from the Eclipse Foundation.

Business Meeting and Nominations Minutes

Called to Order 9/13/2008 10:57 A.M.

Reading and approval of minutes

June Minutes were read and approved.

Reports of officers

Chair

Encouraged members to show up for the elections meeting

Vice-Chair

Reported that he looked into the elections meeting venue at [Pittsburgh Technology Council]. The venue will be announced when it is confirmed.

Secretary

• There are 31 members. Two new members signed up today. The 31 member count includes approximately 5 members who promised the former secretary, Bill Moran, that they would send payment last year during the renewal drive.
• All current and former members present were given an opportunity to pay dues and update contact information.

Treasurer

• WPLUG has approximately $820 available funds.
• The bill from our virtual private server provider is due soon. The bill is $215.46 for 12 months of service. This expense is likely to be formally approved at next board meeting on Tuesday September 16.

Member-at-Large

not present

Reports of committees

Program

Beth Lynn Eicher will continue to be with the program committee but she will not be running for the board for 2009. Bill Moran will join the program committee as well. Email events@wplug.org with ideas.

Upcoming WPLUG events:

• September 20 Software Freedom Day
• October 4 General Users Meeting Elections

Public Relations

Talk to Dave Kraus to sign up to help for Software Freedom Day - Saturday September 20. We will be one of 500 local teams who will be distributing free software in a public place with foot traffic. Nickolas Schmebri volunteered to provide color printing for handouts. A truck is needed to transport a cart from Dave Kraus's house. More info on Software Freedom Day http://softwarefreedomday.org/

Internet

Nickolas Schmebri asked if the wiki was purposely setup to allow anonymous edits and page creation. Yes this is on purpose. The captcha has been effective in eliminating wiki spam. Vance Kochenderfer and Mike Semcheski have been monitoring the edits and creation activity. Seldom, they will revert to a previous version due to vandals.

Mike Semcheski is working on a web based self-service membership database.

Investigating

nothing

Newsletter

Content needed. email top@wplug.org Books available for review ¨Running Xen" "Refactoring HTML" "The Official Ubuntu Book" "Ubuntu Unleashed 2008" "Enterprise AJAX"

ErieLUG

ErieLUG has been meeting with success.

They have requested two things from WPLUG 1. If anyone wants an opportunity to give a talk, especially talks that they have already presented at WPLUG, ErieLUG would love to have you. 2. They could use supplies for installfests. There is a need especially for surge protectors and network cables.

Nominations

Four nominations were accepted:

• Vance Kochenderfer
• Dave Kraus
• Michael Semcheski
• Mathieu Dube

Two nominations were made but the the members were not present to accept. These members will be contacted after the nominiations meeting for confirmation:

• Bill Moran
• David Ostroske

Two non-members were mentioned. Since they are not members they can not be nominated. However, they may run under a write in campaign as long as they become members before the elections meeting. They will be contacted after the nominations meeting:

• Brian Seklecki
• Robert C. Turley

New business

A non-member asked if a program to visit schools has been tried. Young people may be interested in Open Source because the alternatives are expensive (buying proprietary software) or illegal (piracy). The Vice Chair said that there is interest but it is a staffing issue. Nick mentioned that any effort need to be consistent.

A motion was made to make the membership list of names public. If a member does not want to be publicly named in minutes or other organizational communication, they can be assigned a nickname in leiu of their legal name. After debate, this motion was withdrawn.

Adjourn at 11:40 A.M.

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: Vance Kochenderfer
• Co-Host: Your name here
• Donuts: Dave Kraus
• Setup: Dave Kraus
• Clean Up: Your name here