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K-LUG - Rochester, MN Area Linux Users Group

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We can use presentations for upcoming meetings, please see a list of ideas if you're willing but lacking a topic.

LUG News

K-LUG Google calendar

K-LUG unofficial activities Google calendar

K-lug Facebook page


Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday October 8th

Jean Barmash has volunteered to speak on Grails, and has provded the following description and bio.

Grails - High Productivity Web Framework for the Java Platform.

Grails in a high-productivity framework that espouses convention over configuration and takes a lot of good ideas from Ruby on Rails framework. It is based on Groovy Language, a dynamic language designed for easy integration with Java (Groovy is a super-set of Java). Grails is a high-productivity framework by following the "coding by convention" paradigm, providing a stand-alone development environment and hiding much of the configuration detail from the developer. Grails is built on top of proven Java frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate. In November 2008, G2One, the company behind Groovy and Grails, was aqcuired by SpringSource, which in turn was acquired by VMWare just a few weeks ago. (For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grails_(framework) ).

In this presentation, you will get a brief overview of Groovy's capabilities, and then we'll learn about the key concepts behind Grails, and its plugin system, and how it can be used to rapidly prototype applications, and how it enables you to be much more productive programming web applications.

Jean Barmash is the CTO of EnergyScoreCards, a startup company that helps benchmark energy efficiency of multi-family buildings, where he is responsible for architecture and implementation of the SaaS software using the Grails framework. To his role, Jean brings a wealth of experience in different areas of technology creation. Most recently, he was Director of Technical Services at Alfresco Software, the Open Source Enterprise Content Management Company, where his responsibilities included architecture and hands-on development of content centric solutions, training, and working with open source community. He also worked as Sr. Consultant and Trainer at several Wall Street Firms. Well-versed in both .NET and Java, he is interested in the innovation going on in Web 2.0 and bringing it into the Enterprise. He is a frequent speaker on technology and architecture topics at various user groups and industry conferences such as Software Development Practices, Enterprise 2.0, Atlanta DevNexus, and others.

Planned Socials: October TBD

There will hopefully be a night of Segway trials, where we'll rent two Segway's for an entire evening at $40 each, and split the cost among whoever shows up. People would need to bring small bills for easy contributions. But we need someone to coordinate by picking a time, a location, and calling the Segway people to coordinate the event.

A photography walk would also be fun and would need to be done when most of you are still willing to play outside, ie in October. Bring your camera, and we'll all try our hand at taking pictures. We need someone to pick a starting location, route, and to lead the event (this means you get to pick the time and date!). Also, this would lead well into another photo manipulation presentation, we had one on GIMP and one on PaintShopPro a couple years ago, if anyone is willing to give such a presentation at a near-future meeting.


Lunch: Thursday October 15th

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N. Look for a multitude of miscrients.


Planned Social: October TBD

Ideas can be found here or invent your own. What would you like to do? Tell Tina.


Annual Swap/Sale: Thursday November 13th

Come if you want to Sell Stuff!
Come if you want to show off Stuff! (prizes awarded for crowd favorites)
Come if you want to Buy Stuff! (K-Lug Tee shirts available too)
Come if you want to eat Stuff! (Pizza and Pop available for a donation)

We need volunteers for creating advertising, putting up signs, running the recycling station, and of course everyone should bring their stuff to sell/swap.
We'll make use of volunteer labor and/or elevators to help get everything up to the second floor, no worries.


Job list - volunteers needed!
-Bring your stuff to sell/swap. Everyone.
In previous years some of the folks higher priced stuff or a lot of stuff have pre-announced their "list of goodies" on the news group or our wiki...that might bring out more customers.

-Bring your stuff to show off in the Vintage Electronics show, and a “hat” if you want to submit an item for viewers choice award. Everyone

-Come up with a Vintage Electronics viewers choice award, be in charge of distributing 1 ticket per customer, tally and award at end of night. _____________

-Create an advertising sales flier, here's last year's example (pdf) that all the people responsible for posting can download and print. Include who, when, where, and what (sale, swap, recycling, vintage, pizza, free CDs). _____________

-Print and show this Sale Flyer to friends. Everyone.

-Bring your computer stuff that needs to go to the recycling ($0.10 per pound, rounded up to the nearest dollar for ease of making change). Everyone.

-Help others bring their stuff up to the room, down to their cars. _____________

-Bring a bathroom scale that's accurate at low weight ranges, so we can figure out the appropriate recycling fee to charge. _____________

-Man the recycling area, do the weighing, cost figuring, and providing of change. _____________

-Bring your truck and be willing to take a load to the recycling during the recycling center's open hours (Mondays-Saturdays, 8-5). Brent V

-Coordinate the pizza fundraiser, buy pizza and pop plus bring paper plates and disposable cups in quantities sufficient for those who show up. Will be reimbursed out of the profits from the fundraiser (charge is a donation). Pizza supply list, from 2008 results: pizza (4), pop (4 2L), paper plates, napkins, plastic cups, ice. We had ~1/2 a pizza and ~2L worth of pop left over in 2008, but we broke even on the donations, so we were good. The "fancier" pizza flavors were the faster movers, such as supreme went much faster than cheese. And root beer and Mt Dew went much faster than Sprite. Set up a sign indicating that the pizza and pop are in this part of the room, that's it's for donation. Also label a cup as the donation collection container. _____________

-Making some (Ubuntu?) CDs to give away (5?). _____________

-Get a location - Tina W

-Posting. Volunteers are needed to post the flier to many locations. Please sign up to be the poster for the following (suggestions welcome):
-KLUG mailing list and wiki (done) - Tina W
-IBM calendar - _____________
-IBM Beehive- _____________
-Ham Radio Club _____________
-PCIG Website -_____________
-Mayo classifieds _____________
-Craigslist, Think Bank _____________
-Rochester Freecycle (limited to free pick-up of non-swapped items headed for recycling at the end of the swap) - (this probably won't get done due to posting requirements) _____________
-UCR bulletin boards - in hard copy _____________
-RCTC bulletin boards - in hard copy, bring your own push pins _____________
-IBM Building 107 - post hard copy _____________
-IBM White Building(664) - post hard copy _____________
-Other IBM buildings - post hard copy _____________
-Venture Computer - send email of flyer, request posting _____________
-NorLug? _____________
-Area 51? _____________
-Computer Liquidator on 2nd street? _____________
-p0wned? _____________
-Other places/ways to advertise? Public access? Would we qualify for free advertising on the radio, newspaper, etc?
-Wherever else you can think of. _____________

-Create illegal wayfinding “Tonight!” signs for posting at UCR on the evening of. ("Tonight!" with arrows in appropriate directions, highlighting of what the event is and the room number, advertise the free linux CDs on our signs, etc) ________________

-Arrive at UCR at 5:45 pm, post illegal wayfinding signs on all entry doors, nearby directional corners, and on the room door. Bring masking tape. Also responsible for taking down at the end of the night. Find a door stop so we can prop the room door open. The masking tape and a pen are also useful for posting a sign above the pizza/pop, saying it's available for donation. And for putting a label on a cup as being the donation collection container. _____________

-Arrive at UCR before 6 pm, write welcome message on the chalk board, also list upcoming KLUG events and dates, K-LUG website address _____________

-People could list what they haven't sold and haven't tossed, post-swap. http://www.k-lug.org/ForSaleorWanted . _____________

-After it seemed like everyone was there and set up, we went around the room and let each seller advertise their highlights and freebies. Let buyers have a chance to ask if anyone had something in particular that hadn't been mentioned. Advertised the recycling, and the food.


Lunch: Thursday November 12th

11:30 am, at the Apache Mall food court near B&N. Look for a multitude of miscrients.


Planned Social: November TBD

Ideas can be found here or invent your own. What would you like to do? Tell Tina.


Annual Holiday Party / Game Night: Thursday December 10th

Our December social occurred last year at Pwned (now closed), in the past it's been held at Area51 or it's been a LAN party (need host). Other options could include a night of non-computer games at a house (again need host, and btw if this type of thing interests you don't forget to check out the Activities email list and calendar, links on the wiki), X-box type games at a local movie theater, playing laser tag at the House of Bounce, or whatever else you suggest. Let Tim or I know what you'd like.


Free: Open Source Stickers for your Systems

Openstickers.com - download these images, print on sticker paper, cut and apply.


Planned Technical Meeting: Thursday January 14th

No presenters yet, please volunteer! Need some ideas? Here are topics your fellow K-LUGgers have requested.


Upcoming Meeting Crisis!

Well, not really a crisis, but we do need some meeting topics (& speakers) for 2009. We'd like to know what you want to see and hear about. Please email Tina or Tim with suggestions for topics. Should we run some previous sessions again (maybe something you really wanted to see but missed out on)? What type of topics are good, what type are bad? Also don't forget, Speakers earn up to $40 as an incentive for their presentation! Also see this page for a list of suggested topics http://www.k-lug.org/Meetings


Old News Items

See the OldNews page.