[Eug-lug] The Future of EUGLUG

[Mike Cherba]

All,
	As promised, I am sending out a summary of our discussion of last
nights meeting.  I will send out another email following this one with
questions specific to ensuring we serve the needs of our mailinglist
members.  I apologize for the length of this mail, but we covered a LOT
of important topics in our 2 hours last night.  Lets discuss these on
the mail list and meet back in August to take the final votes about what
to do.
			-Mike


EUGLUG MEETING 07/20/06
--------------------------
Main Topics of discussion:  

1.) What do people want to get out of EUGLUG?
Basically, people seemed to agree that our group has 3 primary
functions. Those are (in no particular order) Socializing, Outreach, and
Education.  While we have been doing fairly well at the Social aspect,
we have been failing in the latter 2.

What do you see as the mission of EUGLUG?  What priorities shoudl the
group have?

2.) Should EUGLUG adopt a more formal Organization.  Offical
Nonprofit/All Volunteer status.  Real group identity in order to be able
to handle arranging/participating in more community outreach/Education.

We heard voices on both side from this one.  The main points being "If
we want to be able to handle money in order to pay for things for the
group we need an offical organization." and "There are ways around all
needing any offical organization for anything.  People who want things
to happen should just step up"

Please weigh in and let us know what you think.

3.) CLasses/Lectures
Everyone seemed to agree that More classes/Lectures were a good idea.
I've listed some of the topics we came up with below.  

If you see a topic below that you would be willing to speak about please
respond to me off list and we can talk about when works best.  If you
have another suggestion please add it to the list.  

	- introduction to OSS for Windows/MAC
	- VMware
	- Cygwin
	- Mingw
	- postgres
	- apache/apache2
	- Ubuntu
	- Jango
	- Bash / Shell programming
	- Basic C Programming
	- finding and installin Linux Apps under various Distros
	- Kernel Internals/Structure
	- TEX/LaTEX
	

4.) Commitment to EUGLUG.
What are people willing to commit to contributing to EUGLUG?  Time?
Money?  If we get 10 people who are willing to give 1 hr per month
outside of meetings we can accomplish quite a bit.  If we want to do
things like bring in new members, arrange installfests, etc we need time
and energy from our members.

What level of commitment are you willing to give to EUGLUG outside of
meetings?  1hr per month? 2-5hrs?  Let us know.

5.) Outreach opportunities.
If we want EUGLUG to grow and prosper as a group we need to get people
of all different knowledge levels involved.  We also need to let the
public at large know about what we are doing so they can participate. 

Which of suggestions below, if any, do you think EUGLUG should pursue?
	- Joint presentations with other groups.  IE Linux in astronomy
	  with the Astronomy club, or Linux in Ham radio with the Ham
	  radio club.
	- Getting involved with LCC or U of O student body.  Host/offer 
	  involvement in Open Source projects? (suggestions for projects
	  are definately welcome!)
	- The same with area high schools? 
	- Free/OSS software clinics with/through CRRC?
	- Suggestions are very welcome.  There were a couple more last
	  night, but I apparently didn't write them down.

6.) Website/server suggestions
As many of you are no doubt already aware, EUGLUG has a new server which
is being prepared to allow Tux a graceful retirement. (Largely thanks to
Larry's Efforts.  Thanks Larry!)  While step number 1 is to get the
current site ported over there have been many suggestions for other
website improvements.  

Which of the follwoing ideas do you think EUGLUG should pursue?  Which
would you be willing to contribute time to working on?
	- Weekly email with all EUGLUG related activities. (meeting
	  reminders etc.)
	- Additional mailing list to seperate meeting related traffic
	  from general Linux help?
	- Any other suggestions?  I think there were a few more ideas,
	  but again I got to involved in the discussion and forgot to
	  take notes.