October 29th 2008 A meeting place and what we should do
David C welcomed people to the meeting noting that people continue to sign up; there are now about 30 people on the list. The monthly meeting on a Wednesday had ten people at its last meeting; the Friday pub meeting had six.
The group now has an irc channel, a wiki, a website, a members page and a Facebook group through which people can communicate.
Bradford College, which owns the building, has asked for £56 to hire the room; various alternatives were discussed including affiliating to the university students’ union, making a link with lifelong learning, finding a room at a public library and finding a room at a pub.
Among the themes and topics for the group are:
-
covering both newbie and expert interests
-
spreading Linux: the possibility of holding an installfest/demonstration of how to install Linux was discussed
-
what we were promoting: free software? Linux? open source applications? Distributions used by members include Ubuntu (most), openSUSE, Debian, Slackware and Gentoo
-
lobbying, for example, the Council about the use of open source though this was not seen as an immediate priority
-
supporting businesses: some members have had discussions about developing an organisation to support local businesses using Linux; this would be a separate entity but would look to draw on expertise within the Group.
There was an interesting discussion on the value of GPG keys; it was agreed that this should be a topic for a future meeting.
Past Meetings