[Klug-general] Maidstone Meeting Jan09 - SYNOPSIS

[Colin McCarthy]

Our first meeting of 2009 was a record breaking event with 21 people
attending. This was a great turn out, which I am sure everyone enjoyed. It
just goes to show you how strong the Linux community is and how it is still
growing. Especially in Kent.

The people attended, their distro of choice and IRC nickname were;



     Name

Distro

IRC nickname

Colin McCarthy

ubuntu

colin

George Martinez

ubuntu


   guhan

fedora 9


   Daniel Subert

yellowdog

zone12

Lawrence

debian/ubuntu


   Daniel Ellis

ubuntu

danellisuk

Gavin coles

ubuntu


   Paul Littlefield

gentoo

paully

Kevin Groves

anything

Serq

Allen

gentoo

allenjb

Sharon

centos

boudicous

Shish

debain

shish

Rich

ubuntu


   Fish

debain

fish/naxxtor

Dan Attwood

ubuntu

danbuntu

Peter Childs

ubuntu

bluedragon

Ifor

debain

gaukrogi

Spode

ubuntu

spode

Julia

debain

kitty/katje

Mike Evans

fedora/ubuntu

mikeevans

Nathan Friend

suse

nathanfriend


 Our 'Tech Talk' for this month was called 'Linux In Business'. Paul spoke
about the reasons for using free Open Source application and servers for his
clients and the associated benefits. This talk generated lots of interesting
discussions, too numerous to record, but included visualization, remote
monitoring servers via sms, off site backups and the ridiculous price some
companys had been quoted for a Small Business Server install with Exchange.
That sort of solution could of course be done cheaper with Linux products.


 Paul's company is www.linuxisready.co.uk


 We then broke for refreshments and everyone mingled and grouped together to
find out who was who, and what they did etc.


 Our second 'agenda' item was to discuss the KLUG website and form 'Action
Groups' to ensure things were actually done. First a brief overview of the
current site, the virtual server is runs on and the reasons why were given
to the group. The server currently runs the website, Mumble and OpenAreana
but can do anything.


 We then took suggestions for content for the site and these items included.


 About Us
How to start and where to start with Linux

Tech Talk content – summary and downloads
Maps
Meeting Events
Meeting Notes
Planet
Twitter Feed Page

The server also currently has a wiki installed and it can be secured with
kerberos. If the wiki is not needed it was suggested it was deleted.


 We discussed Content Management Systems (CMS) and Wordpress, a plain wiki
and Drupal were suggested. As more members have experience and interest in
Drupal it was decided to go with that. However to ensure that security was
done properly this time and the server not be compromised like lug.org.uk.


 It was suggested that Postgress be used instead of mysql because of memory
usage and also switching from apache to lighthttp (spelling/correct name not
sure of as did not hear clearly). Neither of these suggestions have been
decided on.


 Action Groups were organized from people who volunteered and they are.


 *Server Team*

Spode, Fish and Mike Evans will look after updating the server. An automatic
system will be enabled to email them changes/updates that need to take
place.


 *Website Team*

Dan Attwood, Nathan, Colin and Dan Ellis will install, configure and
maintain Drupal.


 *BackUp Team*

Paul offered help setting up the backups.


 *Content Team*

Spode offered to write the 'Linux where to start guide'.


 Then to end the meeting we had a quick 'idea shower' for future events.

Ideas for 'Tech Talks' included ssh, vpn, Hamachi, backups and MytTV which
Paul and Spode will do. For social events it was suggested another 'Summer
BBQ' was organized. I believe a location was offered but I need to check.
And it might be nice to have another 'Night out in London' as the one after
LinuxExpo was good.


Thanks to everyone who came and especially James and Daniel Subert for the
location.

Colin
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