Changes to the mailing list……..

Hello:

We’ve discussed at the last few meetings that there’s a need for change in communication with group members.

From those who responded in a recent informal poll, there was an overwhelming opinion that the mailing list was the preferred means of communication but we’ve seen that we need more interactivity as it’s been lacking somewhat in the current system, which Nick and Larry have graciously been providing for many years.

Mike has set up new mailing list software on one of the LUG’s machines, and we’ll be moving the users from the old mailing list to both the NJLinux-announce and the NJLinux-discussion lists.

Users that do not want to be on one or both of the lists can simply follow the directions to be removed through the instructions on the bottom of any of the announcements, or by just letting us know, so that you can
be removed manually.

Hopefully, though, all of the current users will stay and contribute to the community that we are trying to promote. We wanted to set up the new discussion list in an effort to be able to more easily get feedback and information from the members in order to arrange events like Software Freedom Day, the Revolution OS screening, etc.

So please, join us, join the discussion, and hopefully we can make the group more active and productive.

Thanks,
–Bob

NJLINUX discussion list now available.

NJLinux is moving to a Mailman based mailing list system for its meeting announcements and has started a discussion list for general LUG discussion. You can sign up through the links at the right under the LUG Links section, or HERE for the meeting announcements. And HERE for th discussion list.

Over the next month we will be migrating the old meeting announcement list to both new lists. Once that is done, you will be able to control your own subscription status.

Cheers

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.

Meeting for 9.29.10

The August meeting was good. It was nice to see some new faces and have a good crowd. Rumor has it that Murph will be giving some sort of presentation for our next meeting so stay tuned for details. See you in September.

Mike

Meeting for 8.28.10

Sorry for the late post everyone. The meeting is of course this Wed. Please try and bring some Linux questions that we can discuss and hopefully solve. See you there.

Cheers

Mike

Software Freedom Day – Proposed Flyer

Well, it’s a day later that I was shooting for, but here’s a draft of the flyer for Software Freedom Day.  I’d really like to hear some feedback on the flyer, as well as proposed demonstrations and/or presentations that folks would like to do, so that I can include them.  So please let me know what you think.sfd_flyer-1

I was not able to upload the original Scribus desktop publishing file, probably because it looks like straight XML.  If anyone wants it to remix and/or make corrections, just let me know.

Addition:  I’ve gotten a ton of great suggestions from an Amiga mailing list that I’m a part of, and have the following revision to the flyer: sfd_flyer-3

I personally think that it’s a little information dense, a little too wordy.  I welcome suggestions to improve it.

Addition2:  Thanks to Zak for some layout suggestions for an alternate, cleaner layout:  sfd_flyer-4

Software Freedom Day – Call to Action!

People, it’s time to act!  Sam has done great work in getting the venue squared away at the Morris County Library, where we have the Meeting Room reserved for the 18th from 1-4:45pm correction: 2:30-4:45.

Take a look at the Software Freedom Day site and think about perhaps a small presentation you might like to do.  There are several ways that we can run this, we can have one main presentation going with a variety of speakers, or we can see if we can divide the room up, and run several presentations simultaneously.  Think about if you’d like to do a quick one-off presentation, or to talk about a subject on and off all day.  We can discuss the logistics of this at the meeting.

I’m going to work up some flyers this week, and put them up here for all to comment on.  If they look good, it would be great if everyone printed some, and put them up around.

Think about what you might want to do, we only have one more meeting before Software Freedom Day!  Feel free to leave ideas in the comments, or email me.

Software Freedom Day.

For those of you that are interested, please get back to me quickly, waiting until the next meeting, on August 25th would seem to be too late.  We need for volunteers to find and get detailed information on a venue to hold SFD.  A place with a lot of foot traffic that may at least have some interest in technology would be good.  We will need power, and prefereably internet access. (this is not essntial)  The date is for Septermber 18th, so we need to get moving now if we are to get some publicity for the event.  http://softwarefreedomday.org/

UPDATE:  Sam has done some great work and found out that we can reserve the meeting room (while it’s still available) up until the 18th of August. We’ll have the room from 1-4:45.  So, we have a meeting place, in the Morris County Library, if we have the support of the members to go ahead.  So, who is game?   We will need people to promote the event, so that we have some traffic this year.  Last year we were there, but the public didn’t know about us.  Can anyone step forward with some good ideas and action to make Software Freedom Day a success?

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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

Convention Season!

Had a great time at Southeast Linux Fest last weekend. Short week of work, and off to Fosscon this coming weekend. I’ll talk a little about the two conventions at the upcoming meeting.

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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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Introduction to Free and Open Source Software – Boonton 2010-04-20

The NJ Linux user’s group would like to announce a brief presentation
of “An Introduction to Free and Open Source Software”

It will be held at the Boonton Holmes Library at 6:30 on Tuesday the 20th.
We’ll spend an hour going through the following:  A quick
demonstration of some Free applications for Windows, OpenOffice.org,
and The GNU Image Manipulation Program.  Then we’ll take a look at
Linux, a free operating system, as well as a quick overview of some
applications available for Linux.  This will be followed by a question
and answer session.  Updates and more details can be found at
http://njlinux.org and email questions can be addressed to
linux @ murph.info.

Edit:  I’ve included the flyer that I’ve been distributing here:  open-3

Edit2:  Here are the slides that I’m planning on showing.  Suggestions welcome. pres1