VLUG Meeting Minutes 1998.10.27

The meeting started at 7:05pm with tickets being passed out for the door prize draw. People who were present, according to the sheet I circulated, in no particular order:

Chris Halsell called the meeting to order, and announced that he'd be MCing the meeting, observed that Mike Sgt. Meeting Thorpe wasn't present, and said that he had a rather informal agenda including the door prize draw, which would come later.

First: the computer show. It was a huge success; our booth was packed all weekend, in contrast to the other user group booths on either side of us. We passed out 750 brochures.

Next item: presentations for meetings. Some discussion of possible topics. Deid Reimer agreed to do a presentation on Samba in November. (keep reading, this got changed before the end of the meeting!).

Discussion of changing our monthly meeting schedule to better coordinate with other groups in the area, so guest speakers can easily talk to more than one group. The target agreed at the user group summit meeting was for us to be on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. General consensus: this would be fine. Not everyone likes Tuesday nights, but one Tuesday night is the same as another. Some concern about whether we can change our room booking with UVic.

Java digression.

Next item: the consultants/installers list. Chris Halsell took a bunch of names for the list, and said that he'd work on a Webbed database that people could add and remove themselves from (this may be connected with the similar database for members in general). Brief discussion of whether we want to have a set rate for consulting/installing; consensus that NO, it should be between the consultant/installer and the client.

Question: would VLUGgers be interested in buying CDs of Oracle 8.1 instead of having to download it themselves? Consensus: yes, we would. Discussion of the current status of Staroffice (it appears to be difficult to actually buy it as opposed to using it for free noncommercial use). News item: the Mexican education system is putting in wall-to-wall Linux servers.

Back to the computer show: we sold about 104 CDs, resulting in a large profit for the club. Discussion of why our booth did so well. We're not completely sure, but the two factors that most people seemed to think were more important were the simple fact that Linux is very hot right now, and the fact that we were welcoming. It was noted, for instance, that our people mostly faced the passing parade to greet people when not actively engaged in talking to the public, instead of sitting at the computers with our backs to the public. Also, even though not all of our people were wearing them, enough people were wearing VLUG polo shirts that we looked like a team, and the shirts were more attractive than some other booth uniforms.

Back to meeting presentations: further discussion of topics, and the need for some targetting of both advanced and newbie users. The Command of the Month idea was discussed. Deid Reimer agreed to do PHP in November, pushing Samba to December. Chris Halsell agreed to do Apache, and Matthew Skala agreed to do Perl, in the new year (probably Apache in January and Perl in February). Matthew Skala agreed to do man as the command of the month in November.

BREAK

Door prize draw, and business card draw (from the business cards collected at the computer show). The winners of the business card draw were:

Red Hat software package

Barry Denluck, DenCor Computer Installation
Eddie Yay, Beautiful BC
Eric van Wittenburg, consultant
Steve Reid, policy coordinator with the Office for Disability Issues
Ralph Sketchley @home

Red Red Hat Hat

Joanna Plumpton, senior web developer, Metronome Internet
Sheila Cox, photographer
Brent Sirna, Applied Microsystems

Discount news: Bolen Books is offering members 10% off on books (not just computer books)

Question: What do people here use Linux for? Discussion. Lots of programmers, lots of it's an alternative to the other major PC desktop OS, some educational users, some gamers. General consensus: Everything! Noted that Linux can bring new life to your old 486.

Question and discussion on database platforms for Linux; some mention made of mySQL, and the fact that it connects nicely to PHP, which happens to be the topic of next month's presentation.

Question: What's the fee for membership? Answer: $20/year, no GST. Noted by the treasurer that getting a GST number is probably NOT a good idea for our group at the moment.

Meeting broke up around 8:30pm.