On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 14:44, Hagmann Jörg wrote: > I wasn't aware of this: http://group.contextgarden.net/ (the "ConTeXt > group"). > > Could somebody tell me, in more detail than on the above site, the purpose of > it and in particular its relationship to NTG (which itself is already ConTeXt > dominated)?
Dear Hagmann, Thank you very much for the question. We decided to create a new user group during the meeting in Brejlov in 2010. Main reason was that even though NTG is the group of choice for supporting ConTeXt development, it is not really clear to many users why they should join a Dutch user group. And it is not always justified to use NTG's money for ConTeXt only since there are also many other LaTeX users in the group, other interests etc. The group has been founded slightly more than a year ago, but only started operating more seriously during the last ConTeXt Meeting in Belgium. We have 28 members now, but sadly still no bank account. We hope to settle that withing the next two weeks, even though we are still not sure which bank to choose/in what country. The main complication is that group is founded in France, president is Dutch, treasurer is German ... It is trivial if group is established in the same country where the bank account is opened and if both president and treasurer are present when the account is opened. We didn't want to promote the group too publicly too much yet since everyone's first question would be how to pay for the membership. Why the user group? * TeX user groups often fund projects like development of Latin Modern, TeX Gyre, MetaPost, LuaTeX, ... ConTeXt group would join other groups in helping TeX develop further. * Costs of domain name, server, ... * When organizing ConTeXt meetings, one might have to pay for the hotel and different other costs in advance (before conference fees are collected). The user group could help paying those costs. On the other hand some conference sites are more expensive than others. In case of an expensive conference, ConTeXt Group can help cover part of the costs. People who come to conferences are usually the most active developers and conferences are the most perfect way to brainstorm and get things done. On the other hand, if some money is left from the conference, the group can use it next year or for other reasons. One can also help individual developers to join the conference when they cannot afford to. * The group could apply for different fundings, search sponsors etc. * We want to publish conference proceedings. The first issue is being worked on and will hopefully be published very soon in 2012 (the plan was to release it before Christmas, but beginning of 2012 is more realistic). In short: the group will help organizing meeting, pay for server-related costs, promote usage of ConTeXt, "force" authors to publish in nice proceedings, allow grateful users to give back, foster development of different projects that are relevant for ConTeXt, ... We also need a new webpage design and I hope that registration still works after being moved to the new server ;) You are welcome to register. We will let you know as soon as we will be able to accept the payments. Mojca ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
