May Meetup

[Benson Muite]

For the May meetup, would there be interest in one of:
a) Affordable housing with FreeCAD [1]
b) Learn how to play music with Linthesia [2] and Pianobooster [3]
then serve it using MPD [4]
c) Experiment with FOSS software to record traffic by hand and compare
results with image analysis software. At present bicycle and foot
traffic does not seem to be used in road planning. There is also the
issue of privacy in recording everything passing by. [5][6][7]
d) Other suggestions?

1) https://wiki.freecad.org/BIM_Workbench
2) https://github.com/linthesia/linthesia
3) https://www.pianobooster.org/
4) https://www.musicpd.org/
5) https://github.com/OpenTrafficCam
6) https://github.com/glossyio/traffic-monitor
7) https://www.sytadin.fr/
8) https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/


Will fill in further details at:
https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Librelocal/2026

[paul mayero]

FreeCAD, Linthesia and PianoBooster look very interesting. 

I think they are good candidates.

[Benson Muite]

paul mayero <pmma...@gmail.com> writes:

> FreeCAD, Linthesia and PianoBooster look very interesting.
>
> I think they are good candidates.

Thanks for the reply. For FreeCAD, can look for a place that does
pre-fabricated housing or makes housing building materials. Suggestions
welcome, but can also ask if this is of interest and there are no
suggestions.

For Linthesia and PianoBooster, would there be interest in visiting a
school or children's home? We could offer to donate a computer with
Linux. Refurbrished computers start at about 6,000/=

Other possible venues include:
- https://www.kagongo.com/
- https://5starmusic.co.ke/
- An ICT Hub with internet access and electricity

Other suggestions welcome.

Benson

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Nairobi GNU/Linux User Group" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to nairobi-gnu...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nairobi-gnu/c5739e02-9ab7-46b3-8640-faf037b1a1bbn%40googlegroups.com.

[Benson Muite]

Benson Muite <benson...@emailplus.org> writes:

Hi,

Just bringing this up again. Maybe other people have presentation
suggestions?

A discussion about costs is also needed, unless Paul and Cornelius will
sponsor indefinitely.

[Daniel Muringe]

Hi,

I would love to present in the May meetup.
Topic: Building TCP to HTTP from scratch

Would really appreciate to know the procedure

[Cornelius]

Hi Benson, Daniel

> Just bringing this up again. Maybe other people have presentation

> suggestions?I created a form to collect feedback and get talk proposals for the next meetup. Will you be presenting on the topics you suggested? I'll share any feedback I receive from the form, but I'd also encourage everyone to reply here directly.

https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/vIG9kaXUPDpBYbCk4VQcYbdPRCjMxiDD2DVLkqkr9J0/

> A discussion about costs is also needed, unless Paul and Cornelius will
> sponsor indefinitely.

On that note, Paul is working on a blog post addressing the topic of sustainability - hopefully he'll drop by this weekend.

Daniel,

> I would love to present in the May meetup.
> Topic: Building TCP to HTTP from scratch
> Would really appreciate to know the procedure

Thanks for the interest! You already know the way - you're in.
I'd love to follow along on my own laptop during your presentation, and I'm sure others would appreciate that too. When preparing, could you make it a bit interactive and engaging? Looking forward to it!

[Grivine Bala]

Hello all,

I would like to give a talk on an open source log-structured storage engine called TidesDB. I'm  a contributor and would like to share the architecture and how it can power write-optimized DBMS in the moderm era.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nairobi-gnu/9cafd692-7b03-41b1-92ab-2d0079b47a7dn%40googlegroups.com.

[Cornelius]

Hi Gravine, 

Great to have you. I wasn't aware of TidesDB and I'm genuinely looking forward to learning more about it! I'm also planning a portfolio project built around open source tools, and I'd love to explore how something like a write-optimized storage engine could fit into it  - I already have a separate thread about that, let's definitely dig into that after your talk.

Cornelius

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nairobi-gnu/CA%2Bbw2kW979LxtrqpFwWHR%3Dap72hYHMg29hzCCTCnAYoBReKang%40mail.gmail.com.

[Benson Muite]

Cornelius <corneliu...@gmail.com> writes:

Happy to present, though did not get any feedback about venue choice and
venue costs. Am happy to find other possible venues - schools,
polytechnics and universities are possibilities as well. If other venues
would be considered, please let me know today so can ask some of them
tomorrow and on Saturday.

Maybe worth doing a survey on how much people would want to contribute
to ensuring meetups and the group are successful. At the moment, we
mostly have cost of a domain and time to update the website. If we need
to rent the venue used at the last meetup, what would be the cost per
person? If people bought their own refreshments, would this be
sufficient for some venues? What expected group size should meetups be?
Do people have suggestions for other venues?

Regards,
Benson

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nairobi-gnu/9cafd692-7b03-41b1-92ab-2d0079b47a7dn%40googlegroups.com.

[Cornelius]

Hi Benson, 

The estimate cost for the last meetup expenses are shared here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1POUmwDtLx5u4hZaKIE2qXHE7Z2lgpKQpVFjS0V--L8g/edit?usp=sharing_eil_se_dm&ts=69e9df1f

I haven't yet had the time to talk with Paul about other venue options, but my guess is, we'll still meet at our last venue. Although if you have any leads, you could ask and let us know. 

[Benson Muite]

Hi Cornelius.

Thanks for your reply.

On Thu, Apr 23, 2026, at 10:14 PM, Cornelius wrote:
> Hi Benson,
>
> The estimate cost for the last meetup expenses are shared here:
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1POUmwDtLx5u4hZaKIE2qXHE7Z2lgpKQpVFjS0V--L8g/edit?usp=sharing_eil_se_dm&ts=69e9df1f

This is not openly available.

>
> I haven't yet had the time to talk with Paul about other venue options, but
> my guess is, we'll still meet at our last venue. Although if you have any
> leads, you could ask and let us know.

Had made suggestions one month ago:

https://groups.google.com/g/nairobi-gnu/c/f1_OOuMW0KA/m/qUlzDH69AQAJ

Other places include:
BuruBuru public library
Memorial Park https://memorialparkkenya.org/
Jericho Social Hall ( https://nairobi.go.ke/jericho-ihub-icdl-graduation-turning-skills-into-digital-opportunity )
Vision Social Hall Ruiru ( https://visionhousing-coop.com/index.php/products/hall-for-hire.html )

[Cornelius]

Hi Benson,

Thanks for the venue suggestions, I actually saw that but wasn't sure what next, I thought you'd have enquired about them first. I reached out to both Kagongo and 5 Star Music Academy:
- 5 Star said their space can't accommodate larger groups(which we;re expecting to have almost same number as previous meetup).
- Kagongo is supportive but their road is under construction, so it's not ideal right now. So we'll go with Marble Arc again for this one. We will follow up with Kagongo later to check on whether we have to pay for the venue or if they'll still accomodate us for free for future meetups.

Could you share your presentation topic so we can put together the poster?

---------

Hi Douglas,

Could you go ahead and draft a poster for the May meetup? We'll get Benson's topic shortly, but feel free to start with what we have - Daniel (TCP to HTTP from scratch) and Gravine (TidesDB). We'll add Benson's once confirmed.

Thanks!

[Cornelius]

Also got a follow-up from Kagongo that they're launching May 15th and are still finalizing pricing. They mentioned around 35k KSh for a rental like ours. Free access is reserved for children's music/community groups like Ghetto Classics, not quite our use case. The pricing is too high considering we're trying to cut costs. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nairobi-gnu/9711d221-6f6b-4148-ac26-4399e33121a4n%40googlegroups.com.