[Lugcomms] Lug Comms meeting April 28: IRC log

[Mary Gardiner]

PaulWay: Now, I should probably check if KatteKrab actually sent out a
real agenda.

hypatia: I didn't see an agenda, just a request for items for it.

hypatia: And no replies to said request.

PaulWay: OK, I'll post the one I've mabulated up.

PaulWay: BTW, gobby access to shared workspace on
tangram.dnsalias.net:6522 - password = channel name without hash.
PaulWay: The agenda is there and you can create other documents too.

PaulWay: If only I could get Sobby to remember its state between server
reboots.

PaulWay: I've posted the agenda to the email list JIC.

hypatia: Time to kick off? Are you chair PaulWay or KatteKrab?

PaulWay: Shall we start?

PaulWay: I don't mind chairing.

PaulWay: Can we go for introductions until quarter past?

hypatia: Let's start with our name and LUG. I don't know everyone's
affiliation.

PaulWay: Alphabetical order, maybe?

***hypatia is Mary Gardiner, AussieChix

PaulWay: Whatever order.  Better just get it said :-)

***PaulWay is Paul Wayper, CLUG.

***harrisony is Harrison Conlin, Sydney Linux User Group

***yama is Sridhar Dhanapalan, SLUG

PaulWay: While we wait for everyone else to wake up, can the SLUGgers
tell us what they've been up to?

PaulWay: And anyone else for that matter :-)

yama: had a successful SLUG meeting on Friday

dragonheart: yawn - almost there. (Daniel another CLUGger just nosying
in)

yama: our General talk was about OpenAustralia, which brought in a few
people who wouldn't normally go to SLUG

hypatia: AussieChix has had a quiet month: Melissa Draper is doing
monthly meetups in Sydney, and Brianna Laugher and Claudine Chionh in
Melbourne.

PaulWay: Ooooh, nice!

PaulWay: hypatia: Lana Brindley is doing great things organising dinners
in Canberra.

hypatia: PaulWay: That's not a 'chix event though: GGDs aren't
Linux/Free Software events.

PaulWay: Ah, OK, point.

PaulWay: Sorry.

hypatia: Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane also had GGDs in April (Girl
Geek Dinners), but only Melbourne and Canberra have organisers who are
also LinuxChix members.

hypatia: That said Lana is doing a great job from what I hear :)

yama: how prominent is FOSS at GGDs?

***jhesketh is Joshua Hesketh, TasLUG

hypatia: yama: I can only speak for Sydney. It's not invisible, I think
a show of hands had about 1/4 of women in some way interested in Linux,
but it's not enormously prominent.

hypatia: The Sydney dinners are sponsored and the sponsors are not
primarily FOSS companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft have all sponsored).

PaulWay: I'd say about the same for Canberra - people know of Linux and
FOSS but they might not use it.

PaulWay: None of our events have been sponsored :-/

hypatia: The Sydney GGD seems more closely aligned with the Web
2.0/Ignite kind of crowd than the Free Software dev or user communities.

hypatia: Lots of talks about Twitter and HTML 5.0 and mashups and so on.

yama: ugh, web 2.0 ticks me off

PaulWay: Heh.

yama: they love to leech off FOSS and not acknowledge it

PaulWay: I like Web 1.5.

yama: beta

hypatia: Yeah, I love the work that the autonomo.us people are doing
trying to force Free Software issues and ethics well into the web space.

hypatia: Even though it's early days.

PaulWay: All the social stuff of Web 2.0 with none of the glittery
emptiness.

PaulWay: Oooh, sounds great hypatia.

***PaulWay checks it out.

PaulWay: OK, shall we move on.

hypatia: It's a pretty active mailing list, anyone can join if you're
interested in the Web/Free Software/Free Culture intersection:
http://autonomo.us/

hypatia: Let's move on.

PaulWay: If anyone's got anything that they'd like on the agenda, add it
to the Gobby document.

PaulWay: Yep, moving on.

PaulWay: Software Freedom Day.

PaulWay: Early plans?

hypatia: Nothing from Chix, maybe we should actively push our members to
get into their local SFD teams. More women role models.

PaulWay: Yeah, definitely!

hypatia: If anyone from a local SFD team would like me to promote your
SFD efforts to the chix, let me know.

PaulWay: Great stuff.

hypatia: Maybe we should take SFD to the mailing list?

PaulWay: Is there any point in me organising another CD giveaway?

PaulWay: hypatia: I think it's all going to be stuff to chew over on the
list.

bob2: PaulWay: aren't there lots of leftovers?

PaulWay: I'm not sure.

PaulWay: jhesketh: do you know what happened to the Open Discs I sent
down there?

PaulWay: I sent the rest of them up to HUMBUG to be given out to UQ
students at O-Week.

PaulWay: As to what the individual groups have left over, I think we
need to take stock - perhaps an email to the Linux-aus list is called
for.

PaulWay: Has anyone else got some around?

PaulWay: I've got about 100 or so, and about 20 Open Source Mac discs
courtesy of cafuego.

jhesketh: PaulWay: I think they are spread out a little. I think Josh
Bush took some to Launceston (north end of state) for the members of
their meetings

jhesketh: The computer society at UTAS also have a bunch they give away
(I think)

PaulWay: jhesketh: Well, I'd rather they were in use, so that's all good
:-)

jhesketh: and Leah may have some and/or in storage

jhesketh: I might ping the UTAS guys and see how they are going with
giving them away :)

PaulWay: Cool - can you drop a note on the lugcomms list with your
findings?

PaulWay: OK, shall we move on again?

PaulWay: OSDC, KCA, other conferences - what's coming up?

jhesketh: +

jhesketh: *will do

PaulWay: Cool, ta.

jhesketh: Kernel conference Australia?

hypatia: Stephen Thorne (Jerub) tweeted today that the OSDC CFP is about
to come out.

hypatia: Michael Davies and I are about to get to work on lca 2010's
CFP, but that would come out late May at the earliest.

PaulWay: jhesketh: that's the one.

***PaulWay nods at hypatia.

hypatia: There's an NZ PyCon later this year, I think.

hypatia: Yep, early November: http://nz.pycon.org/

PaulWay: Cool.

jhesketh: Zookeepr (on a conference note) has been making large strides
thanks to the recent hackfest in Melbourne

PaulWay: jhesketh: neat!

***PaulWay pines for a real hackfest.

jhesketh: However the features we want for the CFP's may delay LCA's CFP
or (more likely) cause us to revert to an older version for this year :S

hypatia: Is there a good AU/NZ calendar of FOSS events?

jhesketh: PaulWay: define *real* hackfest?

PaulWay: My reason for mentioning these is that I think it's a good idea
to mention them at LUGs and start some interest in the people who don't
usually go to these conferences.

PaulWay: hypatia: great question - I have no idea.

hypatia: Really LA would be best placed to host one.

hypatia: Oh, SAGE-AU is coming up.

hypatia: It's not all Free, but there's quite a bit of overlap:
http://www.sage-au.org.au/display/conf/Home

PaulWay: I should put in a paper for that.

yama: OpenAustralia hackfest on 6 June, co-hosted by SLUG and Google

yama: at Google in Pyrmont, Sydney

PaulWay: Ooooh, neat!

hypatia: Special interest: http://2009.foss4g.org/

PaulWay: I may even be in Sydney for that if my course dates work out.

hypatia: yama: They tweeted today that they've just realised that's the
long weekend, and are considering moving it.  hypatia: (I hope they do,
I am never in Sydney long weekends.)

yama: hypatia: oh, hadn't heard about that. I don't think it's a problem
though.

hypatia: Really? I would think a long weekend would significantly reduce
attendance.

PaulWay: If I lived in Sydney I'd be getting away from it for a long
weekend too :-P

PaulWay: :-)

yama: sometimes it's good to get away from the computer :)

PaulWay: So we should check with Linux-aus if there's a calendar for
FOSS events that people can post to.

PaulWay: There's something out of date at
http://www.linux.org.au/taxonomy/term/5 but it needs lots more input
methods.

hypatia: There's LWN's one internationally, but it would be good to have
something we can filter down by state/region/city, say.

PaulWay: Yeah.

hypatia: And then LUG meetings and SIGs and so on could be listed.

PaulWay: That l.o.a page does seem to have an 'upcoming events' list,
but I'm not sure how that's generated.

hypatia: Really it would need to aggregate from existing calendars, and
last I checked that was not functionality supported in Drupal.

PaulWay: cafuego mentioned giving it some codin' love.

PaulWay: But my main problem is how do we all put our own events on
there without nagging someone from LA?

yama: last time I checked purserj was maintaining LA's ical feed

PaulWay: jhesketh: real hackfest (n): one at which actual coding takes
place and real projects get worked on.

PaulWay: As distinct from lame hackfests, which is where I organise a
hackfest but about three people turn up.

PaulWay: yama: I'd like to move away from the
single-person-point-of-entry problem that I think chokes so much of what
is on Linux Australia's website.

yama: most of the hackfests I've been to consist of people just mucking
around

yama: PaulWay: yes, the web stuff needs some love

PaulWay: Anyway, last agenda item.

yama: and some decentralisation

jhesketh: I think the LA web team's TODO list is forever growing

jhesketh: perhaps they need some hackfest loving

PaulWay: Was there talk of a face-to-face meeting?

PaulWay: jhesketh: yeah.  Now there'd be a good idea.

jhesketh: and just as an aside... anybody here wanting to join the LA
webteam?

PaulWay: Drop trac on the todo list, put the code into git, and start
organising local hackfests.

hypatia: Can we move back on the agenda? I know I started this
digression but we're 49 minutes into a 3 point agenda, currently at item
2!

PaulWay: Yep.

PaulWay: Is there any 'official' LA word on the idea of a face-to-face
LUG meetup?

PaulWay: Any 'unofficial' word?

PaulWay: Is anyone even interested in meeting up face-to-face with other
LUG coordinators?

hypatia: I am not so much, but it might have been useful back in the
SLUG days.

PaulWay: How do you mean?

jhesketh: unofficial: LA's meetings have been discussing where LUGs are
going... Conclusions, results etc all unknown. My question for a F2F
would be where is the value?

hypatia: Well, mostly discussing governance models, maybe organising
speaker swaps, regional LUGs getting visits from capital city LUGs, and
so on.

hypatia: Because AussieChix is distributed, I am not sure what we'd talk
about with Aussie LUGs.

PaulWay: jhesketh: fair point.

hypatia: I suspect individual visits would probably make more sense as a
starting point. From what I see of SLUG at least, there doesn't seem to
be a lot of "so-and-so from Perth is giving a talk" and maybe there
should be more of that.

PaulWay: hypatia: my problem here is that by the time anyone moves on
anything in LA it's way past the actual meeting time.

hypatia: Perhaps we as lugcomms people should be keeping an ear out for
travelling folk, and aggressively putting them in touch with their
destination LUG.

PaulWay: Aggressively pushing dopplr and getting speakers to send their
travel details to lug coordinators might be one way of doing that.

jhesketh: well with remote speakers LA does have a LUG funding schema...
Perhaps the F2F could iron out details on how to make fair use of that
sort of thing

jhesketh: Perhaps as a lead in to any F2F meeting would be a state of
the lugs type discussion on the mailing list... Which LUGs are active,
how often are they meeting, what sort of numbers do they get, what areas
are people interested in... This would lead into the governance models,
speaker swaps etc based off how things are currently going...

yama: the LA ctte's job is to facilitate, not do

PaulWay: We at CLUG never seem to really get a talk organised more than
a couple of weeks in advance, so by the time we then put it to LA for
mooting around the various other LUGs the speaker's gone on and done
other things.

yama: if you want something done, make a formal proposal

PaulWay: yama: so who's job is it to do?

PaulWay: Look where that got me with the Open Disc proposal last year.

yama: umm... the community's

yama: PaulWay: don't know what happened with your opendisc thing. I
wasn't on the ctte then

hypatia: Dopplr seems like overkill to me. I was thinking more like "hi
LUV leader, this is SLUG leader, member X is in Melb this month for your
meeting and is a ninja, you should have him/her at your meeting"

PaulWay: LA dropped the ball several times, including not telling me
that the proposal had been knocked back, not suggesting any ways that it
might be approved so I had to guess them, and not actually paying the
company and leaving me with the bill.

jhesketh: Experienced speakers will always have talks up their sleaves.
So arranging a talk isn't so much an issue as how convenient it is for
them to visit. If they are going through the town anyway looking into
the possibility of dropping into your LUG is always a great idea. So a
system where we can report Rockstar XYZ is visiting you should invite
them could be a

PaulWay: So it's not really great for LA to say "you've got to do the
work" if LA will then make it harder by being bureaucratic every step of
the way.

jhesketh: a good idea*

PaulWay: jhesketh: yeah, that is as you say a good idea.

PaulWay: But - and this may surprise you - few people at CLUG tell me
when they're going interstate or overseas.

yama: PaulWay: clearly not good :(  From my experience with orgs, the
problem stems simply from lack of personal bandwidth from ctte members

jhesketh: well that is why I mentioned that a system for reporting
Rockstars could be a good item to look at

PaulWay: Yeah.

hypatia: Seems like a chicken and egg problem. If we gave them a reason
to mention it, they might mention it.

PaulWay: True.

hypatia: Like "SLUG is short a speaker in June, anyone think they'll be
up Sydney way?"

hypatia: Which means using lugcomms more aggressively.

yama: PaulWay: is there anything outstanding that you need
paid/addressed? I can raise it at the next meeting

PaulWay: And certainly telling our LUGs that if people are going to be
interstate they should get in contact with the people up/down/across
there to give a talk.

PaulWay: yama: It's been fixed up.

PaulWay: But it has left me less inclined to try to propose another run.

PaulWay: But I shall mention it on the LA list to see if there's more
interest, perhaps in a smaller run this year, and we'll go from there.

jhesketh: PaulWay: For what it is worth, it was awesome for you putting
up your hand to do it :). We need more people to submit patches not just
create bug reports

PaulWay: Yeah.

PaulWay: And my general point of view is that I want to actually
contribute, rather than wait for other people to do it.

PaulWay: Anyway, shall we wrap it up there?

yama: LUGcomms and the LA list would be good for hunting for speakers

yama: we (slug) should use it more

PaulWay: Yeah.

PaulWay: And I'd like to come up and go to another SLUG meeting.

PaulWay: We can always find billets for anyone that wants to come down
and visit us... :-)

PaulWay: Anyway, I've got another call to go to - keep talking amongst
yourselves ;-)

yama: we paid bus fare for klepas to come up a few years ago

yama: we can do it from time to time

hypatia: Can we call a close to this one?

yama: yes, kill it