[wplug-members] Membership Meeting, Sat., March 11th, 10:30-11:30am

[David Ostroske]

Here's another reminder:

WPLUG MEMBERSHIP MEETING
March 11th at 10:30am to 11:30am
CMU Newell-Simon Hall Room 3002

WPLUG will be holding a membership meeting on Saturday, March 11th,
from 10:30am to 11:30am in CMU's Newel-Simon Hall Room 3002, in the
morning before the GUM.

We'll need 15 members to attend in order to make it all official. The
meeting will be held before we get into the SQL talks.

Here is the agenda for meeting. It's a bit formal, but we can get
through things much smoother if we step through it in this order. It
can be changed if need be.

Reading and Approval of Minutes (of previous membership meeting)
Officers' Reports
* Chair - Bill Moran
* Vice-Chair - Beth Lynn Eicher
* Secretary - David Ostroske
* Treasurer - Patrick Wagstrom
* Director-At-Large - Chris Teodorski
Board Reports
* PR Committee proposal (See below)
Committee Reports
* Internet Committee
* Program Committee
* Investigating Committee
* Newsletter Committee
* ErieLUG Revival Committee
New Business
* Free-for-all; we can take up anything here.

PR COMMITTEE PROPOSAL
Here is the proposal recommended by the Board last month. We'll be
discussing it, debating it, possibly amending it, during the Board
Reports. For an assortment of PR-related initiatives we could take, no
matter what we decide about the committee, see below.
--BEGIN
WPLUG PR committee
A Public Relations Committee shall be appointed by the Board, and
shall be renewed promptly after a new Board takes office. The WPLUG
Vice-Chair shall be a member of this committee and serve as its chair.
Its duties shall include:
1. To swell the ranks of WPLUG membership.
2. To establish and maintain WPLUG's reputation as a key organization
for Open Source in western Pennsylvania.
3. To maintain a high level of awareness of WPLUG activities with the
general public.
4. To obtain favorable publicity for WPLUG.
5. To establish and maintain contact with other Open Source
organizations to coordinate efforts to further the cause of Open
Source.
The committee shall provide regular reports to the Board and to the membership.
--END

SUGGESTED PR INITIATIVES
During New Business, or if it gets passed, after the PR Committee
proposal is voted on, everyone can stand up and suggest different
things that they would like to do to promote WPLUG. If we agree to
have a PR Committee, then they'd help coordinate things. If not, then
we'd make arrangements on the fly.

Here is the brainstorm list that I put out a few weeks ago. This was
based on discussions held in December. You can add to this list if you
like.

We could:
* Invite some big-name companies who have put Linux at the heart of
their businesses to give a talk. IBM and Novell have done this for us
before, and VMWare's coming in April. If you've got contacts in the
industry, why not ask them if they'd like to speak to us?
* Present talks that, given enough promotional push, would draw some
crowds. Some ideas: Mono at CMU, new Firefox features, Ruby on Rails,
and CMU's sponsorship of free and open-source software development.
* Have series tutorials. Would you want to teach a mini-course on your
favorite subject to a small group of interested people?
* Set up tables at computer shows, hand out live CDs, and show off
what all you can do with a Linux machine. It's a good way to show off
Linux to interested passers-by.
* Arrange a site visit to local companies. We visited Inflow back in
2004, and a good time was had by all. You could talk to Inflow again,
or Pair Networks, or the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, or 3ROX, or
who knows who else?
* Take WPLUG On The Road. We could pack up and head to other parts of
Western Pennsylvania. Erie's welcomed us in the past. We could also do
Johnstown and Greensburg, Oil City, Washington, Meadville, Cranberry
Township, and other places.
* Coordinate with other User Groups in the area. Plenty of
opportunities here. We could meet with Perl Mongers for an all-weekend
event. We could share podcasts with other user groups. We could host a
roundtable discussion with other local user groups of what's new and
what's ahead for open source. Or we could do like they've been doing
successfully for years in Ohio, and organize an all-state Mega
Pennsylvania LUG event.
* Do community service. For instance, we could offer tech help to
non-profit organizations, such as schools, libraries, churches, etc. I
have a note about "Abandoned PPS computer" which is somehow related to
this; I think it involves configuring and donating old hardware to
groups that could use it.
* Donate books to local libraries. We could request a WPLUG nameplate
for donated computer books.
* Sponsor social events, like bike rides, or trips to sporting events.
* Get our name out in front of the public. We could Adopt-A-Highway,
for instance. We could adopt a penguin at the zoo, which we've done in
the past. Or if we attend a sporting event, we could get a WPLUG group
announcement.
* Make new WPLUG T-shirts.
* With CACert & GPG, we could establish a WPLUG web of trust by
holding a keysigning.
* Establish free LUG-driven wireless Internet access.
* Set up a Linux PBX. (I believe that Max Putas has more details
pertaining to this.)
* Survey everybody, including ourselves and especially our visiting
non-members, to determine who we are as a group. We could talk to Mark
D. about putting such a survey online.

And that's it for now. See you tomorrow!

--
David Ostroske <eksortso at gmail.com>