[Discuss] Ideas for future VLUG Meeting Presentations

[Larry Gagnon]

I offered at the December 2007 VLUG AGM to assist as Meetings Coordinator
and also with VLUG Publicity (another club member, Patrick Boylan, has
also offered to help in these matters). I would like to make a sincere
stab at improving the VLUG meetings by arranging beforehand
speakers/presenters for each meeting. We have had three offers recently,
so we might be OK until the April meeting, at which point we definitely
could use more presenters. Here is the line-up so far:

1) a review of the Asus Eee PC by Patrick (march)
2) specialist Linux distros by Andrew (february)
3) hardware diagnosis with Linux Tools by Larry (january)

Some ideas for future meeting presentations:
============================================

1) Backing  up and restoring your hard drive in Linux
2) Organizing your home directory and tools for doing that
3) Going green building a low power pc
4) Comparison of Mythtv and LinuxMCE or a LinuxMCE presentation
5) Writing computer games for Linux ( 2d and 3d games ). This one may
take 2 evenings to present. We could even do this as a class with an
assignment for those who wish to participate.
6) Short 15 minute presentation on installing the latest flash on
Ubuntu.
8) Configuring a home network, including securing it
9) Hacking a Linksys wrt54GL.
10) short, 15-30min presentations on a specific Linux/Unix CLI command
(this takes little effort for anyone to brush up on and is useful for all)
11) presentations by non-member acquaintances that use FOSS of any
description in their work, e.g. an astronomer at the Hertzberg Institute
of Astrophysics??, a systems administrator you know who runs a Unix/Linux
shop?, etcetera...
12) solving wireless problems under Linux
13) programming Ruby (or any other scripting language anyone is reasonably
good at)....

If you have any interest of extertise in these areas, or know of anyone  
who does, we would all really appreciate any effort you could make to  
preparing such a presentation, or finding someone who would be willing to  
do it for us.

Presenting in General
=====================

1) everyone can present, we have a wide range of members from newbies to
advanced computer scientists, so topics can also be wide ranging and can
vary from being beginner based to highly advanced. The only requirement is
that they have something to do with FOSS (Free Open Source Software).
2) if you are uncertain about your presenting skills please check out this
great online presenting skills tutorial:

http://www.kevinboone.com/howto_presentation.html

3) we will attempt to fix the projector problem in our usual meeting room
in the Cornett Bldg so past stuffups with the hardware can be rectified.
4) we are looking into getting a UVic account so we can use their wireless
Internet system. It worked in the past because we always had a UVic
student/faculty/staff at past meetings - that is now not always the case...
5) Shuttle computers are available for any club member to use if you do
not have a portable machine to bring for your presentation

I am very open to any other ideas about improving future VLUG meeting
presentations and VLUG Publicity ideas. You can email me direct, chat via
this list or call me at (250) 382-1266.

Larry Gagnon
Director at Large