Thanks for the recap Josh, it sounds like some good things were decided and (re)discovered.
My schedule is really busy until early October, after that, I would be happy to help with the new site in any way I can. --Brian On Sep 23, 2010, at 10:43 PM, Josh Sled wrote: > Hey VAGUErants… > > Let me recap the meeting last night, at least as much of it as I > remember. :) > > > There was rough agreement that the active VAGUE membership would welcome > more, broader, regular content … so long as it is in the orbit and > service of VAGUE's core interests: free, open and open-source > technologies and policies. > > There was widespread agreement that re-branding VAGUE is a non-starter. > People love the VAGUE identity. Hell, *I* love the VAGUE identity; my > raising of "re-branding" was always more practical than to kill > "VAGUE". > > As such, I just purchased the domain name "vaguevt.org", which will > become the new web home of VAGUE. After it is roughed in, we'll > undertake a coordinated "SEO 101" campaign to get some google juice for > a TBD set of terms and phrases related to vermont, unix, open-source, > &c. The goal is to make VAGUE readily findable for people coming to or > in the vermont area and want to be involved with free/open/web > technologies. In support of that goal, we not only need a nice landing > page, but also some form of regularly-updated content (over and above > meeting notices/summaries/&c.), ie. a blog, twitter updates, &c. > > (A very welcome contribution would be a design and visual identity for > VAGUE and the site. A logo, a color scheme, &c … while there's > certainly a sort of hacker aesthetic to the default media wiki style or > unadorned html, there's nothing quite like a unique, simple, consistent > visual design.) > > > Jonathan and Basil from CCV/FIREHOSE were present. FIREHOSE draws > presentations from the technology-focused subset of the CCV student > body, in interest-group style, on a weekly basis. There is a very high > degree of overlap between FIREHOSE' and VAGUE's interests, and I imagine > we'll have coordinated meetings regularly, moving forward. In fact, if > I heard correctly, the October meeting will be about Blender (and its UI > overhaul), hosted at CCV. Details forthcoming. :) > > Between that October meeting and Rubin's offer to host and present a > November meeting, we have some momentum and headway to plan a > forward-looking calendar of content. > > One way to do this is to look to existing companies/organizations that > do user-group outreach. Also, coordinating with regional users groups > and staying on top of conference schedules will be important in trying > to identify and engage presenters as they travel near and through our > region. This is a very parallelizable task, so I hope some of you can > step up to track your own areas of interest. This is exactly the place > where an expanded range of content can help fill the meeting schedule, > and bring in a wider range of attendees, and help grow the group. > > I can see a future where VAGUE is a vibrant hub for Vermonters > interested in the wide range of free and open technologies. I'm > encouraged by our recent activity. And I hope those reading this far > can commit a fraction of their time to helping make that future a > reality. > > -- > ...jsled > http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo $...@${b}
