(Lacking a historian right now, I'm going to write this up, but
hopefully next time around you'll all get this from another source.)
Last night was the MHVLUG Leadership Meetup
(http://mhvlug.org/events/2011/mhvlug-leadership-meetup), an open
meeting to discuss organizational issues and futures. Our plan is that
we'll do 4 of these a year, roughly every 3 months, so the next one will
be in June some time.
In attendance:
* Sean Dague
* Ben Stoutenburgh
* Paul Chauvet
Primary Agenda Items:
New Historian: though Joe Apuzo couldn't make it to the meeting due to a
last minute scheduling collision, he has volunteered to be the next
mhvlug historian. We've declared that an official enough nomination, and
we'll voice vote at the next meeting. Any other people interested in the
role should propose nominations, and we'll do the vote at the April
mhvlug meeting. The "documenting what we do" agenda item postponed until
a new historian is actually elected.
5pm room opening: for now we're going to just make this an open and free
time for people to gather. For April we encourage folks who have
questions or discussion points to come early and bring them then. Also,
if people have ideas about what to do with the room during that time,
come at 5, and have that discussion there. We'll see how it evolves from
here.
Upcoming meetings: we did a lot of brain storming here, and came up with
a lot of good ideas and some leads. I have to say, having three heads
here with Paul, Ben, and Myself made this way more productive and
diverse. That would have never happened if I was still doing this alone,
so lots of thanks to both Ben and Paul.
Publicity: Paul has been building an impressive array of contacts at
local colleges, though other than SUNY Ulster, hasn't been getting much
response from faculty. We're going to focus on trying to find student
groups, as they may be more receptive. In addition to the per event
flier, Paul's going to create a generic flier that we can get into
libraries and other gathering points on their bulletin boards. This will
list both upcoming events, and some past event topics, so that people
can easily see the diversity of what we do. Also, for "crossover" topics
(like Inkscape and Thing-o-matic) we're going to target local arts
groups as well (Beahives, Barrett Art Center, Art departments at
colleges) to see about engaging folks beyond just our existing technical
community. In addition Paul is going to do a lightning talk at the next
MHVLUG meeting to try to drum up volunteers to post said fliers, as well
as blog, tweet, post in other ways about what we do.
Cross Over with other groups: we all felt that mixing and promoting
crossover with other technical groups in the area is good for all
involved. We've got a two pronged strategy here. First, help publicize
other technical groups with the HVSTEM calendar (http://hvstem.org),
including posting their events if they have public icalendar feed.
Second, ensure that we make speakers available to other groups that have
lecture series at least once a year if they are interested. The ACM and
MHCUG are the two primary other groups running local lecture series that
we can support in that way (we provided an ACM talk in Jan, but I think
it's been a couple years since an MHCUG talk was done by Joe, so that
should be revisited if we are wanted.)
The meeting went about 2 hours, with plenty of good socializing and beer
mixed in.
-Sean
--
Sean Dague Learn about the Universe with the
sean at dague dot net Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association
http://dague.net http://midhudsonastro.org
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6
May 4 - Inkscape
Jun 1 - Zimbra
