Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG) Incorporated
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2010 Annual General Meeting
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Friday 26th March 2010
at Google Australia, Pyrmont
President's Report 2009-2010 by Sridhar Dhanapalan
Diversification and change have been the themes of the 2009-2010
period. Of particular note are our move to a new venue (Google
Australia in Pyrmont) and the introduction of birds of a feather (BoF)
sessions to our monthly meetings.
= Statistics =
As of March, we have 37 financial members. This represents a decline
from 51 members twelve months ago. I suspect that this is merely due
to inadequate promotion on our part. A challenge we currently face is
presenting a good reason to become a member. Other than voting rights
and a warm and fuzzy feeling, the benefit is admittedly minimal.
Nevertheless, we are cash positive: $607.48. The Treasurer's Report
will provide insight into that figure.
We have not been taking head counts at our meetings, but it seems
clear that we have been getting more people on average to our meetings
since our move to Google and our expansion of format.
Mailing lists (lists.slug.org.au) continue to be a major part of SLUG.
Compared to figures from a year ago (in brackets), the numbers of
subscribers have been increasing:
announce = 402 (332)
slug = 778 (732)
activities = 210 (200)
slug-chat = 227 (218)
coders = 172 (155)
Also important is the #slug IRC channel on Freenode. At the time of
writing, there are 38 users on the channel.
= Venue Change =
The most significant change has been our shift in venue to Google
Australia in Pyrmont. This has proven to be very fortuitous for us. A
larger and better equipped venue has provided us with greater
opportunities than ever before.
I'd like to express our gratitude to Atlassian for their hospitality
in hosting us from 2007 to 2009.
= Meetings =
SLUG's long-standing bug regarding video recordings of talks can now
be addressed more readily, through the professional audio-visual
facilities available to us. This has also enabled us to deliver more
effective presentations. Patrick Elliott-Brennan and Tim Ansell have
been instrumental in bringing this all together.
Our intermission is now marked by a fine selection of food and
refreshments, thanks to the catering service provided by our hosts.
Dinners have been simplified to a bulk-order of pizza. We have more
people stay after the meeting to partake in dinner and drinks
afterwards, improving the social aspect of SLUG.
= Birds of a Feather sessions (BoFs) =
After an initial few months of adjustment to our new venue, we
embarked on an effort to expand into the other meeting areas made
available to us. We identified an increasing splintering of the free
and open source (FLOSS) community over time into disparate groups.
To address this, we began offering areas alongside the main SLUG talks
for other similar-minded groups to run their own get-togethers. The
hope has been to use the scale and maturity of SLUG to assist smaller
and less established groups. This should in turn promote
cross-pollination.
BoFs we have run include:
* One Laptop per Child, run by Mitchell Seaton
* OpenAustralia, run by Henare Degan
* Linux Multimedia, run by Patrick Elliott-Brennan
* Django
You may have noticed that running an alternative session alongside a
talk is not new: we've been running SLUGlets for years. All that we
have done is take that formula and expand it into multiple sessions
running in parallel.
I want to thank Melissa Draper and Patrick Elliott-Brennan for running
the SLUGlets sessions in the past year.
= Presentations =
Presentations at SLUG have included:
March (AGM): Lindsay Holmwood
April: Matthew Landauer; Andrew Boag
May: James Purser; Jeff Waugh
June: Paul Wayper (x2)
July: Tom Worthington; Rob Collins
August: Mitchell Seaton; Patrick Elliott-Brennan
September: Marc Titmuss; Rob Collins
October: Scott Hollier; Roger Salisbury
November: Marc Englaro (x2)
December: (no meeting, as usual)
January: lightning talks by various speakers
February: Tim Ansell (x2)
Our gratitude goes to all of our speakers. Special thanks goes to Rob
Collins, who has stepped in twice at very short notice to fill gaps in
our schedule.
= Passings =
Sadly, the year has seen the passings of two long-time SLUG contributors.
In May we lost Anthony Rumble, a Linux contributor and business
ground-breaker. Anthony, I am told, was amongst the original SLUG
attendees back in the early 1990s.
The SLUG community was kind enough to donate $180 in Anthony's memory
to Epilepsy Action, and SLUG increased that amount to $300.
Grant Parnell, a past president of SLUG, left us on new year's day.
Like Anthony, Grant's patronage of SLUG has been prolific.
Both Anthony and Grant were well known in the community and will be
sorely missed.
= Departure =
It is with melancholy that I must announce my departure from the SLUG
Committee. Since I was elected as an OCM in 2007, and through my
presidential terms in 2008 and 2009, I have strived to keep SLUG
relevant, interesting and informative to our membership. I am proud of
my achievements, and am grateful to the SLUG community for the
multiple votes of confidence placed in me.
I shall continue to be involved in SLUG, and will persist in
contributing to the FLOSS world.
= Conclusion =
As one of the oldest Linux user groups in the world, SLUG and its
community has shown a remarkable degree of adaptability and
dedication. We've done a lot in the past twelve months to keep SLUG
exciting, and I have high hopes that the next twelve will be likewise.
--
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http://www.linux.org.au/linux
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