2003.10.05 Meeting Notes

LUGOD/CS Club Meeting

Crepe Bistro restaurant, Davis

We met with members of the Computer Science Club from UC Davis to discuss more ways we can work together in the future. The meeting was called by Chris McKenzie, CS Club president.

Topics

• 2nd October Installfest [Information]
  Due to overwhelming popularity of the last two Installfests (and because people had to be turned away), Chris McKenzie would like to hold another Installfest, this time on the standard IF date for this month, Sunday October 19th. LUGOD's IF coordinator Rusty Minden said he cannot help with this IF, so the CS Club will hold this as their own event (but still hoping LUGOD members can come help volunteer).

• LUGOD Demo Box [Action: Bill Kendrick, Mike Simons, Henry House(?)]
  One of LUGOD's two demo boxes, which is used regularly at Installfests, will be moved back to Davis. (Mike Simons has been tending it in Dublin.) Bill Kendrick suggested that he can either leave it at his apartment, or perhaps Henry House may be willing to store it at his office. (Bill will ask.) Installfest volunteers have been missing it at workshops where it wasn't set up.

• Installfest Network [Recommendation]
  Right now, we have four possibilities for Internet access at Installfests. We've used a variety of solutions, but should settle on one.
  1. A network port is available next to the room we use for Installfests at UC Davis
  2. Set up a laptop as a wireless bridge and use the building's WiFi
  3. Ask a professor for a MAC address to borrow during Installfests
  4. Relocate Installfests; either elsewhere on campus, the Davis Public Library (open until 5pm on Sundays, but we can pay $10/hr to stay after), a City of Davis computer lab or conference room, or the Davis Food Coop's conference room)
  With regards to relocating, we may wish to hold Installfests at alternating locations (e.g., every other month at UC Davis)

• Installfest No-Shows [Recommendation]
  We should keep track of people who repeatedly RSVP for Installfests, but then do not show up. When the need arises to decide who can take a spot at an IF, we can keep the no-shows in mind, and give preference to people who aren't known to be flakey.

• Xandros for Installfests [Recommendation]
  Disk repartitioning (e.g., for dual-boot installs) at Installfests has been one of the more difficult tasks lately, due to continuing changes in Microsoft operating systems. Apparently, the Xandros Linux distribution comes with a very good partitioner, so we should consider purchasing a few copies for us at Installfests.

• Installfest Volunteer Briefings [Recommendation]
  Kevin suggested that volunteers at Installfests ("installers") should be forced to go through a briefing before being able to volunteer at Installfests. Many ideas were thrown out about how to keep track of who does what and to what machine, and how to better serve attendees in an organized way. Having rules like "installer must write down what they did to the machine" is useless if none of them know that this needs to be done, though. (Hopefully, more discussion of how to improve the Installfest process will be discussed on the new 'vox-if' mailing list.)

  Along with keeping track of who are "official" Installers, we should also make note of who has expertise or experience in what, so that skills are matched up with needs.

• Installfest Volunteer RSVP [Recommendation]
  Bill suggested that Installfest volunteers ("installers") should be kept track of on the LUGOD website, and that whether or not they'll be attending the next workshop is kept track of. This will allow better gauging of how many volunteers will be attending, and therefore when to stop accepting 'installee' registrations.

• Post-Installfest Session for Installees [Recommendation]
  A suggestion was made to hold basic 'How to use Linux' classes a week before Installfest workshops. We all agreed a class would be good, but decided it would be better to hold these classes after installfests (due to advertising issues, mainly). Bill suggested that the event be mostly question-and-answer, but still have basic 'feeding and caring' information at the beginning. We'll need to find volunteer(s) to teach these!

• Pro-Linux Talks [Information]
  The CS Club is interested in having some Linux talks on campus (not unlike the well-attended talks given by Microsoft on occasion). Give-aways would be useful in getting higher attendance. (e.g., Microsoft gives away XBoxes) LUGOD may be able to get some 'doorprizes' from businesses we have relationships with (e.g., books from book publishers).

• CS Club Open Source Project [Information]
  The CS Club members are interested in putting together some OSS project. Mike Simons suggested that there are some bugs in some GNU tools (GDB, Make, etc.) that he'd love to see fixed. :^)

• Movie Nights [Information]
  LUGOD is interested in taking part in CS Club's movie nights. CS Club mentioned recent movies have had low attendance, and they'd love the extra advertising.

• Chris McKenzie on vox-officers [Action: Bill Kendrick]
  Kevin Murakoshi was added to LUGOD's "vox-officers" mailing list when it was created. He is no longer president of the CS Club, and Chris McKenzie is. Bill will subscribe him to vox-officers. (Chris has also agreed to subscribe to vox-outreach, vox-if, and possibly vox, to keep an eye out on discussions within LUGOD.)

Attendance

• Dmitriy Ivanov (LUGOD)
• Zach Johnson (LUGOD)
• Bill Kendrick (LUGOD; root)
• Chris McKenzie (CS Club; president)
• Kevin Murakoshi (CS Club)
• Mike Simons (LUGOD; sys)
• Chris Takemura (CS Club)
• Ian Tucker (CS Club)

Hosting provided by:
Sunset Systems
Sunset Systems offers preconfigured Linux systems, remote system administration and custom software development.

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