December party 'meeting', and prospects for future meetings

I want to particularly thank Sarah Newman for the really great talk
about MAC and AppArmor.  A set of her talk slides has been posted to 
http://www.svlug.org/ , linked from SVLUG News on the front page.

As a reminder, Wednesday, December 7th, coming up, will be SVLUG's 
_last_ access to Symantec's meeting space.  Also (as has been happening
rather a lot), SVLUG has zero future speakers lined up.  Short version:
SVLUG meetings currently stand dead in the water.

It will be a party for us, by us (no speaker).  I'm going to bake from
scratch a couple of pies, and bring paper plates and implements.  It
would be nice if more people pitched in, similarly.


As I was to the audience last night, let me be clear here, too:  I'm not
going to go on running everything for SVLUG.  My role is supposed to be
just a member of SVLUG's Web Team.  I'm reducing my role to that,
starting year's end.

What it takes for continuation of meetings:



1.  SOMEONE WOULD NEED TO ACCEPT A VENUE OFFER.

Three separate people have generously made tentative offers of new
meeting space.  Those are on public display for our volunteers'
reference here:
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/volunteers/2016q4/004848.html
Those folks' _full_ e-mails without redaction of their e-mail addresses
and telephone numbers are in www.svlug.org's site-docs directory (to
protect their privacy).  Any SVLUG volunteer can use shell access on
www.svlug.org to run with this.  

Currently, these folks have shell on www.svlug.org:

mwendall:x:1001:1001:Margaret Wendall,,,:/home/mwendall:/bin/bash
rick:x:1004:1004:Rick Moen,,,:/home/rick:/bin/bash
mark:x:1005:1005:Mark Weisler,,,:/home/mark:/bin/bash
lisa:x:1006:1006:Lisa Corsetti,,,:/home/lisa:/bin/bash
danielg4:*:1007:1007:Daniel Gimpelevich,,,:/home/danielg4:/bin/bash
mehmasarja:x:1013:1014:Mehma Sarja,,,:/home/mehmasarja:/bin/bash
tim:x:1003:1003:Tim Utschig,,,:/home/tim:/bin/bash
jgrosch:x:1002:1002:Josef Grosch,,,:/home/jgrosch:/bin/bash

Not on that list and want to help?  Request shell access as an SVLUG
volunteer.  _Or_ ask any of the above for a copy of text file
site-docs/possible-venue , the three offers with e-mail and telephone
numbers.

*I* am not going to say to any of these offerers that SVLUG accepts their
kind offers.  Because I'm not in charge any more.  Get it?

If you want it to happen, step forward.




2.  SOMEONE WOULD NEED TO START ARRANGING MEETINGS.

Arranging a meeting isn't complicated.  Let's see, SVLUG meets on 7-9pm
on 1st Wednesdays.  (For the sake of discussion, let's assume this keeps
happening.)  So, you use /usr/bin/cal, and find that the next meeting
dates are:

Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016.
Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017.
Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017.
Wednesday, Mar. 1, 2017.
Wednesday, Apr. 5, 2017.
Wednesday, Jun. 7, 2017
Wednesday, Jul. 5, 2017.

You might want to make sure a planned future SVLUG meeting day doesn't
conflict with a major holiday.  In the past, when a regular SVLUG day 
has landed right _on_ the 4th of July, SVLUG chose to cancel that
month's meeting.  Whether one on July 5th should be cancelled is a
judgement call, that volunteers might discuss in advance.  

I've given the world a place to check for holiday conflicts here:
http://linuxmafia.com/bale/holidays.html
(I use that for some of my work on the BALE calendar.)

Anyway, you check SVLUG's Web pages about future meetings.  You see that
all of these dates are still open.  Now, if talking in e-mail or IRC
about a potential speaker, you can say 'Hey, we have an opening for your
talk on Wednesday, January 4th of this coming year, 7-9pm, in [venue
location].  Can we jot you down as our speaker?'  

You answer (and anticipate) the speaker's questions:
1.  There is [or isn't] an overhead projector.  It requires
[VGA|HDMI|whatever].

2.  There is [or isn't] an Internet feed for the speaker.

3.  Here's the location address, map, description, anything special
needed for getting in.

4.  Speaker have anywhere from X time span to Y time span.  Speaker
can elect to take questions during, or at the end, or not at all,
speaker's choice. 

5.  Yes, we'd love a set of slides to put on our Web site, whenever the
speaker has them available.

6.  Expected audience turnout varies quite a bit, but often is 20-30.
Audience is a mixed crowd of desktop users, developers, sysadmins,
others, with widely varying expertise levels -- some hobbyist Linux
users, some professionals.  Speakers of all levels of expertise 
(including none) are highly welcome.  Only a topic that the speaker
finds interesting is essential.  Linux relevance can be quite loose;
we've often gone far afield.


3.  TALKS / SPEAKERS HAVE TO BE FOUND.  

I've never really mastered finding speakers/topics, but many just fall
into our laps, which is fortunate.  You can find good speakers by seeing
who's already given a talk at another Bay Area LUG, or by watching the
announcements at Meetups, and we've gotten a number of really good
talks by just chatting with people on IRC and hearing they had been
playing with something interesting.



Anyway, bottom line, all of this happens _only_ if other volunteers
(ones who are not me) step forward and participate.  If not, well, we're
a mailing list, and that might have to be what we become unless/until
someone wants to reactivate the meeting program.

It's been great.  Thanks for all the fish.