New Thread for meeting planning

[Ricky]

Sorry to be abrupt, I thought it might be sagacious to switch over to
a blank thread with the express intent of meetings. In particular the
arrangements necessary for one to happen.

As it seems right now we need a few things for sure to get the ball
rolling:

1. A new faculty sponsor (I am counting on someone closer to the
faculty that this would pertain to for an assist in this, but I am
willing to make phone calls, email, and meet in person as need be.

2. A rough guess as to a meeting location, which would be
contingent on the number of people we can expect. (I'd love to say we
need the Pegasus Ballroom, but we're not quite there... yet.)

3. Advertising and ideas for meeting topics. Perhaps looking into
what we can offer the UCF community at large with Linux and what it
can do to make their lives better.

4. (Tenative) Establish a more structured (not necessarily formal
though ;-) plan for meetings and maybe establish a strong rapport with
the ACM group.

5. (I know this sounds odd, but if we want to spread the word
about linux, we need to sell the idea of open source to the people who
would benefit most from it; i.e.: talk to the College of Education
about Edubuntu and how it can help teachers in this day and age where
budgets are tight and software prices keep climbing; talk to the
professors who teach programming (again, I am sorry for the apparent
ignorance on my part, but I am just pitching ideas) and ask them to
suggest trying a livecd or open source to their students so they can
fully run their programs outside of a little compiler in Windows or
MacOS; etc...)

6. Find people willing to donate a little time in the local IT/IS
community to talk about what linux and open source can do for them.

7. Continue with what has gone on in the past (I have heard a lot
being said about mostly tips/tricks and knowledge-sharing sessions),
and add to it in such a way that it can draw the curious to find out
more.

8. Figure out a way to demystify linux and remove the common
notion that you have to be an expert user to use it.

9. Solve the problem with the dodgy wifi connections on campus
with linux machines. (This is more a personal thing, I have the
problem pinned to the handshake between the AP's while checking the
MAC address)

10. To draw more people in, we could branch into a little bit of
free, open-source software that exists on other platforms as well.

I am pretty much out of steam on this right now, but I think I have
gotten the point across. I am sorry for my lack of technical expertise
with the OSes, but I can at least contribute my knowledge of
organizations and advertising here. I really believe in the potential
of the open-source community, and I really want to see the free-
thinking and creativity it encourages to spread to everyone. I really
think that we have the potential to be a great resource for that kind
of mindset at UCF.

If anyone wants to meet up tomorrow, I'll be on-campus most of the day
and reachable by email.