Archive for category Meetings

Meeting for 2.23.11

Oops, sorry LUGers, after sending the post to the mailing list I forgot to update the website. We are indeed having our meeting tonight. See below.

2011 is here and we are continuing the new year by having our February meeting in our new location. If you have been following the discussion on the discussion list you will have seen all debate over potential locations.

This month we will again be at Converge Coworking in Union NJ. Google map link below. Our member Nick Barter will be hosting the meeting and will be on site by 6:30PM.

GOOGLE MAP

Happy new year everyone, hope to see you at the meeting.

njlinuxmike

Meeting for 1.26.11

2011 is here and we are beginning the new year by having our January meeting in a new location. If you have been following the discussion on the discussion list you will have seen all debate over potential locations.

This month we will be at Converge Coworking in Union NJ. Google map link below. Our member Nick Barter will be hosting the meeting and will be on site by 6:30PM. In case you need to reach him regarding the meeting his cell number is 201-370-3219.

GOOGLE MAP

Happy new year everyone, hope to see you at the meeting.

njlinuxmike

Possible meeting location: NYI, Bridgewater.

I got to take a look at the NYI facility at 999 Frontier Road in Bridgewater. They have several spots that they have offered for us to use.

They graciously had one of the admins there show me around the place.

The main location is a presentation room with a projector, along with several tables, folding chairs, and plenty of space to expand. I’ve put the pictures up on the website here.

I think that it is a good location, the only problem being that it is out of the way for most of the members of the group. Any comments?

Meeting for 12.29.10

Our annual holiday meeting will be the 29th. The plan is to meet in Hackensack at 7PM and then proceed to T.G.I. Fridays in Hackensack (just a couple miles away) at 8PM where we can finish with some holiday festivities. Please remember that this is our ultimate 235 Moore Street meeting. We really need you all to be looking into an alternate location for us to be able to meet at going forward. Hopefully we can use this last meeting of the year to solidify a plan for the future. Happy holidays, see you on the 29th.

T.G.I. Fridays directions below:

View Larger Map

Njlinux.org needs a new meeting place…

Greetings to my friends and fellow NJLUG members. As the new year is on the horizon, with these last months left in 2010 the time has come for me to announce my retirement as the host of the njlinux.org LUG. It’s hard to believe how fast time flies. We have been meeting here in Hackensack for better than 7 years. This is of course by no means an end to the njlinux.org LUG meetings. In fact, the meetings have recently shown a good deal of growth with new members attending regularly and more finding us on the web and meetup.com all the time. It will be important that the group find a new meeting facility so the growth can continue and we can provide our community with a place to discover Linux and the open source opportunity.

So, what we need now is for someone from the group or someone from the community to step up and find a new place to meet. I know it’s not going to be easy but it can be done if we all put our heads together. I will be hosting the remaining meetings in 2010 but we will need a new facility for the new year and going forward. I think now is a great time for everyone interested to start making use of the mailing list to get the discussion going and ideas flowing about how to find our new facility. We will meet two more times in Hackensack over the next 60 days but the discussion list is open 24/7.

Cheers,

Mike “njlinuxmike” Hanson

Meeting for 10.27.10

We’re on for tonight. Everyone should have received the meeting announcement via the new GNU/Mailman announcement list. There are plenty of Linux related news items recently that could come up tonight or you can just bring your Linux questions and we’ll find some answers.

If for some reason you usually get the meeting announcement and did not get one for this month, we can sort that out tonight.

Mike

Results from the Poll so far.

Out of the 90 or so folks on the mailing list, as well as the Meetup, Facebook, and the website, we have received 8 responses. The overwhelming majority went to the mailing list, with a few straggling votes for the web site, Facebook, Evites, and smoke signals, along with a deferment to see how the talk goes.

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Poll: NJLinux online communications.

I’d like to apologize for some of the lack of communication within the group.

Our withdrawal from having an event on SFD was mainly due to a lack of communication on my part, or more correctly, misdirected communication.  I’d like to improve that communication within the user’s group, but I’ll need your help to do it.  I was posting quite a few messages to the blog on the web site, but it appears that it went largely unnoticed.  What might be the best way to proceed going forward.

How would you like to be informed of upcoming events, meeting announcements, and coordination for group events?  If any of these seem unfamiliar, I’ll be doing a demonstration of these at the next meeting.

a)  Mailing lists – either the usual monthly announcement, or perhaps a new list for more frequent traffic
b)  Identi.ca – a microblogging service like twitter, which is opt-in, and allows fast, public communication between people, as well as broader reach.
c)  njlinux.org website – it has universal reach, but thusfar, has not gotten a lot of traction within the group.
d)  RSS feeds – primarily of the web site, and the identi.ca stream, this can be an easier way of getting information from b) and c)
e)  Other suggestions:  I’m open to other means of communication.

Please email your answer and suggestions to murph , or in the comments here, and I’ll bring and discuss the results at the next meeting.  If you’d like for your name to not be mentioned at the meeting, just let me know in the message.
More importantly, I’d like to try to coordinate some of the above, like having the identi.ca stream go to the website, and vice-versa, and maybe a weekly digest of the posts from either go out to the mailing list.  Suggestions would be great.

I’d like to do a quick demo of all of these technologies, and have a group discussion of them, at the next meeting, and try to come to a consensus as to what to do going forward.

murph’s podcast list.

I’m long overdue to put my list of podcasts that I went through in a previous meeting on the site.  If you have any questions, let me know.

google-reader-subscriptions

Meeting for 7.28.10

Our June meeting was very well attended with some newcomers thanks to Nick’s meetup announcement. It was nice to meet Nando, Joe and Clyde. Murph brought to attention the Hope conference and Software Freedom Day happening later this year. Anyone interested in participating in SFD please let the group know so that we can decide weather we will attempt to do a promotion of our own.  Nando offered to look into having some guest speakers attend in the future.

Next month we may have Reg doing a presentation. And I propose we discuss the article by Benjamin Mako Hill titled “Free software needs free tools” in the current issue of the Free Software Foundation Bulletin. It raises some interesting points regarding software freedom.

Mike

P.S. I intended to post my Linux bookmarks folder that I have accumulated over the years and did not do it last month. So here it is: Linux bookmarks

Meeting for 6.30.10

Thanks to Murph for the pod-cast presentation at the last meeting. Keep a look out in that meeting post for some materials from him on the presentation. I believe he will be posting an XML file of all the pod-casts he covered.

For next month the agenda is light so far. I plan on doing a review of my Linux bookmarks folder that I have accumulated over the years. It will likely contain sites that prove to be helpful in your future Linux activities.

Drop me a line if any of you have suggestions or would like to present at the meeting.

Cheers

Mike

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Meeting for 5.26.10

We had a great turnout for our April meeting.
Murph has volunteered to put together a presentation for our May meeting. He is great at presentations so don’t miss it. As soon as he lets me know the topic I will put it in this post. Also, please remember that we will field presentations from any members interested in doing so. Just let me know by email or bring up your ideas at the meeting and we will get you on the schedule and make the announcement.

See you in May.

Mike

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Meeting for 4.28.10

Back to our regular meeting schedule in Hackensack.
Agenda/discussion items:

  • Revolution OS
  • Intro to OSS
  • Local LUG activities

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Success! Many thanks.

This past Wednesday was our screening of “Revolution OS.”  To be honest, I was a little worried. I wasn’t getting a whole lot of feedback, and was concerned that I’d be a lonely geek watching a movie (that I already own) in a rented theatre by myself. Turns out my worries were unfounded. Our user’s group, and the local community came out in droves! We had about 4 dozen people in the Darress theatre, with only one walk out. Considering the depth of the movie, I’d say that was a great success. Many people stuck around to ask questions, which I did my best to answer. We then went over to the Boonton Avenue Grille for good food and more good conversation. Overall, it was a great night, a great opportunity to share information about GNU, Linux, Free and Open Source Software.

I have many people to thank,

  • J.T.S. Moore, who allowed us to show his documentary without charge
  • All the local businesses that allowed me to put up flyers advertising the event
  • The Neighbor News, who ran our announcement in the local paper
  • Jay Sulzberger, for running our announcement on the NYLX mailing list
  • Threethirty and the Fedora team, and the Ubuntu Shipit team who combined sent out three dozen nicely printed distributions to give out to interested movie watchers
  • Tom and the crew at the Darress Theatre, for the great venue
  • The user’s group members that supported my crazy idea
  • And above all, all of the folks who participated, donated and spent some time learning about Free and Open Source Software like Linux. (If I’ve forgotten anyone, and I almost certainly have,  just let me know, I’ll update!)

We raised enough to cover the cost of the theatre, with $101 left over, which will go to the Free Software Foundation, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Stay tuned to the blog, some of the members took pictures, and we’ll update for upcoming events and meetings.

Also, I’ll be running an “Introduction to Free software and Linux” at the Boonton library at 6:30 on April 20th, for anyone who is local and interested. I’ll be showing some current software, and some explanation of what it does, and how you can use it.  Details will be posted here soon.

Again, thanks to all of you, and please let me know what was good, what was bad, and if you’d be interested in more events like this, or if you’d be interested in joining us at the North Jersey Linux User’s Group at njlinux.org.  I can be reached at linux @ murph.info.

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Meeting place after the movie screening.

I’ve made arrangements with the Boonton Avenue Grille for us to be able to gather there en masse after the movie.  That way we’ll have a place to discuss what everyone thought of the movie, or anything Linux or Free Software related!

It is at 108 Boonton Avenue Boonton, NJ, which is just a block or so away from the theatre.

Hope to see everyone there!