[Charlug] Further notes from September, November Meeting

[Brian J. Miller]

Thanks to all who sent something regarding the September meeting held at 
Joseph-Beth.

Attendees: Peter Senft, Dennis Clark, August Flassig, Joe Josey, Brian 
Gryder, Brian Miller

Discussion:

Most discussion revolved around the status of the group, the size, and 
how to increase activity. Some remarks were made about whether it made 
more sense for it to possibly transition into just a FOSS group given 
the small size and lack of other active groups in Charlotte, 
specifically Perl, Ruby, Python, etc. Some comments were made about 
designating one meeting a month geared towards the professional aspects 
of Linux, with the other more geared towards the hobbyist side of 
things. There was discussion about getting access to the current website 
and making some updates to the very outdated appearance and content. 
Discussion surrounding the current by laws and the need to revamp them 
to reflect the current status of the group (whatever that may be). There 
was discussion about August's Mac group meetings that are supportive of 
the general computer using population (see 
http://www.charlotteappleclub.org/). Various other topics were discussed 
centralized around Linux and computing (a shocker I know!) that were 
less pertinent to anyone not physically there.

Future Topics:

Some topics I wrote down that either popped into my head or were 
"suggested" during the course of discussion I'll list here to get people 
thinking if they have something to contribute.

- screen (usage thereof)
- virtualization
- devcamps
- language specific (Perl, Python, Ruby, shell, etc.)
- regexes
- editors (vim, emacs, etc.)

Updates since the meeting:

Brian G. pointed out the Facebook group:
   http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=51217261524

Joe J. updated the homepage content a bit. Joe, did you ever hear back 
from Don Parris?

Other Randomness:

I've started hanging out in #charlug on freenode as someone mentioned 
using IRC during the meeting (Joe can you mention this on the 
homepage?). Our company being distributed makes heavy use of IRC so I'll 
be in there pretty much all the time. If you haven't used IRC or 
freenode, it is a free service that is easy to setup. I currently use 
Pidgin (previously Gaim). Gnome's new default is apparently Empathy 
(available in Ubuntu 9.10). And a more popular CLI app is irssi. On the 
Mac, check out Colloquy.

Can someone refresh my memory on the standard meeting schedule, aka is 
it the 2nd Saturday of the month? I think we should try to hold another 
in November after missing October completely. I was also wondering if 
shifting away from Tuesday (I believe it is) would help attendance, it 
sounded as if it would for at least 20% of the people at the last 
meeting (yes I know that is 1).

-- 
Brian J. Miller
End Point Corp.
http://www.endpoint.com/
brian at endpoint.com