Last night was the MHVLUG Leadership Meetup
(http://mhvlug.org/events/2011/mhvlug-leadership-meetup [1]), 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 [2]), 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.
[1] http://mhvlug.org/events/2011/mhvlug-leadership-meetup
[2] http://hvstem.org
This content is also available at http://mhvlug.org/node/422.
_______________________________________________
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
