2005.12.19 Meeting Notes

Officer's Meeting

Crepeville, Davis

Topics

• Domain Name Renewal
  We've received additional notices about our domain name expiring in February. Henry will check into it. A check has been written, and they should be getting it. We are renewing for 1 year.

• Social Meetings
  Bill asked how the social meeting went. Those who had attended agreed it went well. There wasn't a huge crowd, but that's to be expected. A new member was present. Since Sudwerk is known for its beer, we may want to emphasize carpooling (and hence designated drivers) for those meetings.

• Financial Status
  Henry reports (off the top of his head) that our balance is approx. $850. Emily had a money order sent to LUGOD which Henry has finally received, and will deposit it. Very few people bothered asking for reimbursements for Picn*x14.

• Speaker & Presentation Ideas
  
  • Andrew Hargadon
    We need to ping him to reschedule for his cancelled talk from late 2005.

  • New ideas:
    • Black Box Voting (&/or EFF)
      Henry and Seth suggested we invite BBV to come follow-up on their talk from last year.
    • Objective CAML
      Henry requested it. Perhaps Doug Coker can come speak?
    • GTKmm
      Doug offered to come talk about C++ bindings for GTK+.
    • Trac
      Henry said that Ryan offered to come talk about Trac (a SVN-based Wiki with job tracking)
    • Distributed Backup
      Doug mentioned that bill Broadley at UC Davis may be willing to talk about the backup system he's developed. (And/or talk about Python.)

  • From the TBA list:
    • VMWare
      They are still on the list. Bill has some friends in Palo Alto who work there, so he'll continue trying to get a speaker.
    • Micah Cowan
      Has numerous talks listed, but lives in Santa Clara now. Bill will contact him.
    • Mark K. Kim
      Mark lives in Southern California now, so it's probably safe to remove his talks from the TBA list.
    • TeX
      Henry can do a mini-talk on TeX, perhaps the same day as Micah comes.
    • Mike Simons
      We need to ping him again, to see when he can come talk.
    • GIS
      We need to ping Steve Wormley to see if he's ready to do his GIS talk.
    • Michael Wenk
      We need to ping him.

  • From the Wishlist:
    • Procmail
      Henry can do a mini-presentation.
    • Filesharing
      Look for speakers. Add other protocols/projects to the wish list (EDonkey, BitTorrent, etc.)
    • Instant Messengers
      Try to get Christian Hammond (Galago/GAIM) to come talk?
    • Purge some out-of-date or old-hat items from the wish list.

  • Desktop-application-based talks or howtos?
    • GIMP (photo/image manipulation)
      Bill could probably do it, but isn't readily available to schedule.
    • Scribus (desktop publishing)
      
    • Inkscape (vector drawing)
      Henry, maybe?
    • OpenOffice.org 2.0 (office suite)
    • Audacity (sound sample editor)
    • amaroK (music player/manager)
    • gtkpod (iPod MP3 player transfer tool)
    • Workrave (repetitive-stress-injury prevention tool)

  • Other ideas
    • udev
    • SVN (Subversion) (version control system)
    • SSH FS (SSH Filesystem) and FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace)
    • KDE Kioslaves (fish, audiocd, smb, etc.)

• Demos
  Chris McKenzie has been running demos lately. He said he will book the Davis Food Co-Op Demo Kitchen for a January 14th demo. He need to ask him whether this has been done.

• Installfest
  Seth said January is Chris's turn. A January 21st Installfest was suggested. We need to ask Chris to confirm.

• Secretary
  We need to explain typescript duties to Nick (and trade phone numbers).

• Other Projects
  We've decided to not stretch ourselves too thin, and will hold off on any additional events (e.g., classes with DCN) and focus on revitalizing the club. (We'll keep the projects on the meeting agendas for future discussion, though!)

• PO Box Key
  Henry has one key, but does not know who has the other. (Jonathan Stickel never had it. Emily Stumpf or Mike Simons may still have it.) Normally, the president and treasurer should have copies. Since Henry holds both positions, we should give one to the vice president (Ryan Castellucci). In the meantime, Henry will call the Post Office to ask how much a replacement key will cost, just in case.

Attendance

• Henry House (root, /dev/null)
• Seth Nagao (IF coordinator)
• Bill Kendrick (Public Relations officer)

Non-officers present:

• Doug Barbieri
• Michael Cheselka

Officers absent: (note: due to short notice)

• Ryan Castellucci (sys)
• Nick Schmalenberger (typescript)