Hi everyone,

Here are the minutes of the March 2004 SLUG committee meeting. Please
discuss on the activities list.

These and previous committee meeting minutes are available at
http://www.slug.org.au/minutes/

--- Committee meeting minutes March 2004 ---

   Meeting open, 7:03pm, 5th March 2004

   Present: Chris Deigan, Mary Gardiner (minutes), Peter Hardy, Jaime
   Hemmett, Michael Kortvelyesy, Jan Schmidt (chair), Jamie Wilkinson

   Apologies: Ben Leslie

    1. General business

         1. Direct deposit

            Jamie to chase up the availability of direct deposit into our
            bank account.

         2. Video

            Jan has bought DVDs to store SLUG video on. He will try and make
            at least the audio available at one per week.

            Stamping the audio and video with copyright information was
            discussed, either by inserting a copyright notice as an audio
            segment or putting the notice in the meta-data comments.

            We discussed various ways of distributing the data:

               * Chris mentioned that PIPE Networks might be willing to
                 mirror SLUG audio and video for users connected to PIPE.
               * We could ask interested people to email us
               * We could host it for members only
               * We could take advantage of bandwidth available to some SLUG
                 members in the US
         3. Urn

            Jan and Jaime will purchase an urn capable of holding 20 cups.

         4. Campbell's Cash and Carry Card

            Jamie needs to report back on whether SLUG can get a Campbell's
            Cash and Carry card.

    2. Review of recent events

         1. Installfest

            The installfest was small, but some machines were installed.
            People turned up from outside SLUG.

            More notice would be better.

            The venue (Computerbank warehouse) was good but lacked air
            conditioning.

         2. February monthly meeting

            No meeting muster was sent out, leaving the speakers a bit
            surprised at being videoed.

            No copyright forms were distributed to speakers, Jan and Jaime
            will add the forms to their meeting kit.

            Mary suggested that SLUGlets is not working in the 'tutorial'
            format as noone is willing to do the work to prepare a 45 minutes
            tutorial. Pete concurred and added that feedback on SLUGlets
            recently has been very negative. However, if we return to the
            variety show format, there needs to be a moderator to keep
            discussion at a level that won't lock most participants out.

    3. Upcoming events

         1. AGM

            The AGM is pretty much sorted. Jan and Jamie are confident that
            the President's and Treasurer's reports will be ready.

            We need to get the room confirmed for an announce by March 12.

            Michael mentioned that unemployed people might find the $25
            membership fee steep.

            MOTION: That the membership for full-time students, unemployed
            people and healthcare card holders be reduced.

            The motion was CARRIED, and the 2004-2005 membership fee for
            full-time students, unemployed people and healthcare card holders
            will be set to $15 for the six months after the 2004 AGM (at
            which point it will halve to $7.50 as per the Constitution).
            Membership for all other members remains $25 ($12.50 six months
            after the AGM).

         2. March monthly meeting

            Jeff Waugh is confirmed as the speaker after the AGM. Dinner will
            be at the House of Guang-Zhou.

         3. April meeting

            Pete will do the preliminary organisation in April as Jan and
            Jaime will be away.

            We discussed potential talk topics:

               * Mike's bash tutorial
               * Jeff's Postfix talk
               * Chris on home wireless
               * Gus on emacs
               * a distro forum
               * an editor forum
               * intro to GNOME or KDE
               * What's new in GNOME 2.6?
               * What's new in latest KDE?
               * filesystems
               * doc authoring tools
                    * Docbook
                    * LaTeX
               * kernel 2.6
               * zeroconf networking
               * OpenOffice
               * printing

            We decided to as Gus if he would be prepared to do an intro to
            emacs as the general talk, and Chris a talk on home wireless
            security as the special interest talk.

         4. Next installfest

              1. Date of next installfest

                 A late March or early April installfest is possible in
                 collaboration with the Sydney Uni Free Software Users Group

              2. Installfests large and small

                 The committee is prepared to support large installfests if
                 someone is prepared to run them.

                 Jan pointed out that until we have a group of regulars it
                 will require time sacrifices from the committee to run
                 monthly installfests and therefore they will be less
                 frequent.

    4. Prepare for committee handover

       Mary and Jamie, neither of whom are running for 2004-2005 committee,
       should document their roles by the end of March

       We need to send our new constitution to the Department of Fair
       Trading.

       Michael needs to learn CVS so that he can update the repository.

    5. Other business

         1. More members

            We should advertise SLUG membership prior to the AGM. Can Craige
            McWhirter give us access to his contacts list? We will contact
            the uni computing societies.

         2. Stuff we should be doing

            Several meeting attendees have sent Pete SLUG feedback: in
            particular, the Khans want to help make SLUGlets better, and
            Sarah suggested that the website needs a "where to get help if
            you're new" section

   Meeting closed 8:15pm
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