Meeting-20131012

WPLUG will hold its next general user meeting on Saturday, October 12, 2013, at the Wilkins School Community Center. You don't have to be a WPLUG member to attend; everyone is welcome.

It's Software Freedom Day! ...belatedly! Yes, we know that it was officially celebrated in September, but since our "goodies" didn't arrive on time, we decided to hold off our Software Freedom Day event until October. We'd like to do something a bit different for SFD this year. Instead of holding free software talks for new users, we're opening the floor to anyone who'd like to give a 10-15 minute lightning presentation on their favorite free or open source software.

We'll also hold nominations for the 2014 WPLUG Board of Directors during our business meeting.

Schedule for the Day

2:00pm - Doors open, set up
2:30pm - Lightning presentations begin
4:00pm - Meeting ends, everyone out. We may hang out for a little while afterward.

Speaker/Presentation

Name: Anyone!

Is there a particular free or open source program you just can't live without? Tell us about it! There's no need to prepare a speech or make slides; just show us your program in 10-15 minutes.

Meeting Minutes

Meeting Start

The business meeting was called to order at 2:30 p.m. Chair Pat Barron, Vice Chair/Secretary Justin Smith, and Director-at-Large Joe Prostko were in attendance. Treasurer Terry Golightly was absent.

Report of Officers

Chair Pat reports that last week, he delivered an introductory presentation to Linux at the CPUser grup in Tarentum. It's a general-purpose technology group that is an offshoot of the Pittsburgh Area Computing Club (PACC). From what we heard, it was fairly well-received, and we thank them for the opportunity to collaborate with them.

Vice Chair/Secretary Justin reports that two WPLUG members lapsed in October: Dan Martin and Jacob Skiba. Vance Kochenderfer's membership is due to expire tomorrow, but he does plan to renew. Prior to the start of the business meeting, Joe Prostko decided to renew his membership for another year and David Douglas decided to join as a member.

Pat reports on Treasurer Terry Golightly's behalf that WPLUG currently has $390.98 in reserve. This includes $40 in membership deposits we've received, a $60 donation from Pat to offset the cost of the Open Source Picnic in August, a $216 charge to renew the WPLUG.org VPS for a year, and a $9 charge to replace a lost PO Box key. Does not include $40 in new dues collected today. Pat cannot report on WPLUG's petty cash since Terry is in charge of it.

Director-at-Large Joe has nothing to report.

New Business

Justin talked about WPLUG's past experience with the O'Reilly User Group program. It is a program designed to promote O'Reilly Publishing's technology books and e-books. Participating groups receive free O'Reilly books and e-books, and the group's members receive a discount at O'Reilly's online store. Since many WPLUG members use and recommend O'Reilly books, it seems natural that WPLUG would be part of the program; however, WPLUG's previous application to join went unanswered. Justin speculated that it happened because WPLUG has limited opportunities for O'Reilly to gain exposure. WPLUG has no book-related activities and doesn't maintain a "library" for its members.

Justin noted that some of WPLUG's equipment is stored at people's houses and recommended that an individual be assigned to look after a "WPLUG library" of books that would be brought to each meeting. However, this measure was not formally voted on.

Pat said that many technology organizations have joined WPLUG through APUG, a "meta-user group" comprised of many smaller technology organizations. Joe will look into this since he was the one who filled out WPLUG's previous application to join the O'Reilly User Group program.

Pat moves that David Douglas be allowed to exercise member privileges even though he joined today. The motion was unanimously approved.

The following candidates were nominated for the WPLUG Board of Directors elections in November:

• Justin Smith (Nominated by Stanley Slomberg) - Accepted nomination
• Pat Barron (Nominated by Stanley Slomberg) - Accepted nomination
• Joe Prostko (Nominated by Joe Prostko) - Accepted nomination
• Terry Golightly (Nominated by Pat Barron)
• Stanley Slomberg (Nominated by Pat Barron) - Accepted nomination
• Nikolai Boyadzhiev (Nominated by Justin Smith)
• Vance Kochenderfer (Nominated by Pat Barron)

The WPLUG Board of Directors will follow up with the three unconfirmed candidates to ensure that they are willing to appear on the ballot.

Justin moved to replace "Internet" in Section 7.1 of the bylaws with "Technology." In effect, this renames the Internet Committee the Technology Committee in order to clarify what it does. The measure was unanimously approved. It will be put to absentee ballot and combined with the board of directors election in November.

Justin moved to replace "Program" in Section 7.2 of the bylaws with "Event." In effect, this renames the Program Committee the Event Committee in order to clarify what it does. The measure was unanimously approved. It will be put to absentee ballot and combined with the board of directors election in November.

Meeting End

The meeting was adjourned at 2:57 p.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: Your name here
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• Setup: Your name here
• Clean Up: Your name here

Carpooling

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