I have been thinking after reading some of the posts . Why not put on a contest of sorts Im sure with the contacts that some members have that 3 or 4 similar older computers could be rounded up and the project decided on at a meeting. They could be everything from compiling an O/S to how secure or fast a machine could be given similar hardware . Teams could be chosen from 3 groups of members (experienced, intermediate and newbie) using a random number system to make it as fair as possible. The computers could be donated at the end of the project. The winning team may be chosen from a panel of judges from industry if interested people could be drafted. Just a thought that could make the meetings a fun evening
Cheers Gary -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Craig McLean Sent: December 17, 2009 7:22 PM To: 'CLUG General' Subject: Re: [clug-talk] Why is CLUG such a struggle? Hello. I have some thoughts on this problem. The presentations I've managed to catch recently are competently delivered tutorials. The presenter is well organized and prepared, but the material is a feature demonstration or step by step install tutorial. These types of presentations lack inspiration. These days even a beginner can read some web pages and get fairly sophisticated systems running. The presentations have all the thrill of a knowledge base article. My favourite CLUG moments are all related to the deeply technical presentations and discussions we have. I remember one presenter explaining how fractal geometry worked and then going through the code to generate one. I remember the great energy we generated during the presentation when I dug very deeply into the 802.11b wireless network protocol. The deep discussions on security where people actually looked at code and pointed out the mistake and then showed how to exploit it. These presentations took a lot of time to prepare, were pretty elaborate and they were usually scheduled months in advance. The types of presentations I'd like to see would contain a lot less concrete knowledge but far deeper and more subtle insights into the technology. For instance I don't want to see a tutorial on compiling Gentoo. I would be very interested in somebody starting from bare metal and showing every component you need to get a system off the ground, why each component is important and how they fit together. I'm not interested in the commands you type to compile software from source, a discussion of compiler internals the supporting tools and intermediate compile steps would be cool. A discussion of what needs to change in the kernel to optimally support the new Nehalem chips from Intel would be very interesting. A dissection of the Bluetooth stack would be fun. We don't need to do these types of large set piece presentations every month. Just often enough to attract a solid core of technical people and maintain the social aspect of the club. I also did some research on the web about the decline of Linux user groups. One practical point that came up a few times was the facility that we meet at. A few different people said that when they moved from a place that had lots of electrical sockets and network available to one that had minimal electrical and network available attendance immediately fell off. That resonated with me because when we moved from SAIT which has excellent facilities to Devery which has crappy facilities I stopped coming as regularly. Should we look at trying to find a place that at least has electrical sockets? These ideas would definitely discourage the non specialist audience. In the Ubuntu age that may not be a bad thing. The technical support role that LUGs used to serve is very diminished in this new world. I'm advocating that the hard core audience take the club back. **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
