July 2007 - BALUG-Admin - lists.balug.org

BALUG dinner prices going up!(?) to $13.00!(?)
by Michael Paoli 25 Jul '07

25 Jul '07

I did talk with Dick a bit earlier (evening of 2007-07-24). It looks like we'll likely need to raise the BALUG dinner price a moderate bit. What we're looking at, is moving the price up to $13.00 ($12.00 per person to go to restaurant, $1.00 goes towards covering speaker/presenter's dinner at BALUG and/or other miscellaneous BALUG expenses). This would be the first time in quite a while (probably at least 4 years) that the restaurant portion would be going up (they've been getting the same $10.00 per diner from us for quite a number of years now - and that's including tax and tip). Anyway, hopefully the additional $2.00 wouldn't keep too many people away. At $12.00/head (to the restaurant) for all the food, tax and tip included, and the presentation space we generally* have available to us, it's still a pretty good bargain, ... and I think at least most attendees could reasonably absorb the extra $2.00 in cost without too much (if any) pain. *since we pay nothing extra for the presentation facilities, our basic arrangement is we're subject to being "bumped" - i.e. if someone else books the room (for $$) or the room is otherwise unavailable, we don't get to use it - but most of the time, we have the room available to us - at least for presentations and such (if we're not that numerous, they'll often serve us downstairs - more convenient for them, and we also get more attentive service downstairs - at least if we're a more modest sized bunch). So, ... not that we have a whole lot of wiggle room on the matter, ... but, opinions/thoughts/etc.?

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stats: last meeting & list membership; & other list info.
by Michael Paoli 25 Jul '07

25 Jul '07

For the interested/curious: 2007-07-17 meeting attendance: approximately 22+ (largest in a fair while) 21 dining with us on our regular restaurant deal 1 dining with us on separate menu and pricing I think there was also a smaller bunch (approximately 4) that seemed to want to join us for dining, ... but way late and when there wasn't really any additional seating available with us - I think they went to hang out somewhere else ("lobby", bar?) and may have joined us for at least part of the talk/presentation. list subscribers (does include also those with delivery disabled): $ wc -l */memb*`date -I` 27 balug-admin/membership_2007-07-24 287 balug-announce/membership_2007-07-24 256 balug-talk/membership_2007-07-24 And a rough approximation of unique e-mail addresses (note that some folks use unique per-list addresses): $ sort -u */membership_*`date -I` | wc -l 467 Note also that it appears we have a fairly large number of folks that are subscribed to "talk", but *NOT* subscribed to "announce". Theoretically (at least logically) that shouldn't be the case (in general - typically exceptions being per-list e-mail addresses), but it is totally under "user" control. A quick count of that: $ { sort -u balug-talk/membership_2007-07-24; cat balug-announce/membership_2007-07-24 balug-announce/membership_2007-07-24; } | sort | uniq -u | wc -l 174 Perhaps we'll address that in the future (e.g. subscribe "talk" to "announce" and remove from "announce" e-mail addresses also present on "talk") ... but for now I'm thinking we'll probably leave it as-is. Perhaps when we're about ready to move the lists ... could test that out a bit, and if such a change would work fine, put such a change in place at time of migration (of course, with such a change in place, nothing would automagically prevent an e-mail address from then subscribing to both lists ... but perhaps we could set up something that would automagically deal with that).

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BALUG list archives are (supposed to be!) *publicly* archived
by Michael Paoli 24 Jul '07

24 Jul '07

As discussed on the lists before (and reasons given, etc.) the BALUG lists are to be publicly archived. Looks like quite recently someone or something changed that ... anyway, I've changed them back to being publicly archived again.

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fortune cookie themed logo ...
by Michael Paoli 22 Jul '07

22 Jul '07

So, I was thinking ...: http://www.new.balug.org/images/balug/logo_fortune_cookie.gif Not too radically different, but work in the fortune cookie, retain the Four Seas Restaurant logo, ... I was thinking put it on the BALUG site (in place of the "regular" logo) from 2007-08-06 (first day of LinuxWorld - conference & on-site registration open that day, Expo opens the following day), and have it up there through ... 2007-09-06 ... that would give it a full month, and span a BALUG meeting. I was thinking perhaps put the image up as an image map, and having the portion including and closely around the fortune cookie part of the image be a link to a page giving more information on why we did the fortune cookie, contribution acknowledgements, etc.

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Fortune cookies, etc.
by Michael Paoli 22 Jul '07

22 Jul '07

In case you didn't see it, I did throw open some of the fortune cookie "discussion" to the "talk" list: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2007-July/003962.html I figure we may get some good/excellent ideas on exactly what to print from that list, and we might round up some more contributors on the funding (I also set up separate off-list e-mail alias for contribution pledge stuff). The more administrivial details, can of course, be "discussed" on the "admin" list (or off-list when appropriate).

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Fortune cookies, etc.
by Michael Paoli 19 Jul '07

19 Jul '07

Fortune cookies, etc. Well, between 2007-07-17 and 2007-07-18, I managed to make several calls following up on recommended bakeries for having fortune cookies made up with custom BALUG message inside them. Here's a (legible) write-up from my notes and associated memory: Golden Gate Fortune Cookies Co. 56 Ross Alley San Francisco, CA 94108-1204 1-415-781-3956 just got data (modem?) answers 2007-07-17 ... much better 2007-07-18 1-415-781-3956 --> call 1-415-399-9129 ask for Jennifer individual wrap (I asked for pricing on individual wrap - I figure if we're passing them out at LinuxWorld we'd almost certainly want them individually wrapped) cookie + printing costs ... individual wrap $20 per 100 cookies (doesn't include printing) printing costs (custom message, same message in all cookies - I figure we can probably do the same message in all cookies - simpler, possibly less expensive, and folks will be less inclined to hoard the cookies for their "different" fortunes if they've all got the same message inside). $35.00 for qty. 500 $75.00 for qty. 5000 I was mostly asking about qty. 500 to 5000 - we're fairly likely to be somewhere in that range (or perhaps higher if we come up with support $$). That would be a total, of e.g. $135.00 for 500 $1,075.00 for 5000 (presumably that's not including any applicable taxes). lead time - need approximately one week Mee Mee Bakery 1328 Stockton St. San Francisco, CA 94133-3807 1-415-362-3204 ... ask for manager ... $40.00 per 100 cookies (again, individually wrapped, includes printed custom message (all the same) in each) 10% off at qty 5000 e.g.: $200.00 for 500 $1,800.00 for 5000 (presumably that's not including any applicable taxes). lead time - 3 to 4 days message - 32 spaces/characters per line, 3 lines references: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-July/000375.html

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BALUG - fortune cookies, helping BALUG, etc.
by Michael Paoli 19 Jul '07

19 Jul '07

Andrew, I didn't manage to comb through and find all or most all of the relevant URLs of information to check out, but here are at least several key ones: website transitions & status, etc. (almost current information, also includes mention of some items we could use a bit more volunteers/resources on): http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-June/000373.html BALUG speaker coordination wiki page: http://www.sf-lug.com/wiki/doku.php?id=balug_speaker_coordination BALUG web site: http://www.balug.org/ BALUG lists: http://www.balug.org/#Lists fortune cookie background: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-July/000375.html and fortune cookie update: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-July/000385.html There's been lots of discussion about a (combined) LUG booth at LWE, much of that discussion - at least what I've seen - has happened on the SF-LUG list (mostly with subjects containing "LWE", "Linux World" or "LinuxWorld"): http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2007q2/date.html http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2007q3/date.html SF-LUG is a separate LUG, here are their websites: http://www.sf-lug.org/ http://www.sf-lug.com/ Bay Area Debian (BAD) (http://bad.debian.net/) will be represented (at least a bit) at LinuxWorld at the Debian booth. There may be quite a number of LUGs represented at the combined LUG booth at LWE. new.balug.org (to become www.balug.org) is on the same box as sf-lug.com The old BALUG web page (rather dysfunctional and mostly stripped of all the URLs (mostly commented out) that got broken through prior transitions) is still accessible as: http://www.balug.org/index.php Quoting Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu>: > Andrew, > > Sorry I didn't get back to you a bit sooner, ... catching up on > personal e-mail and such this evening, ... > > I did get more information today on getting fortune cookies made up > with custom message in them. I'll write up a bit more on that and > also send it to our "admin" list (where more folks get to see it, > and it's also publicly archived). I've got that and some other > BALUG stuff to work on and poke at this evening (to the extent I have > time ... that's one of about 3 things I'm working on this evening). > One bit of good news on fortune cookies - lead times are a fair bit > shorter than I guestimated. The longest leadtime that was stated to me > was one week - and the other bakery stated 3 to 4 days. Of course we > still have to work out exactly what we want on the little slip of paper > and such, but we do have some wiggle room - thus far - on the timing. > > Anyway, hope to get caught up on most of those bits between now and > tomorrow morning. > > Some things you might want to peek at for starters ... > BALUG web site: > http://www.balug.org/ > our lists on there (you might want to subscribe to at least the > "announce" list, and if you'd like to help out more, subscribing to the > "admin" list is highly useful, there's also the "talk" list for more > general LINUX/BALUG discussion). They're all publicly archived (if you > have time, you can read/skim the "admin" postings over the past few > months or so (there aren't all that many of them) ... I'll probably > get around to pointing out some more key ones (and of course there's > some new bits to send to the list too). > > There are e-mail contacts also on our web page ... the ones presently noted > at the bottom (for webmaster, balug contact, and speaker coordination) > are probably most useful, and go to the appropriate folks (e.g. > balug-contact goes presently to me, Dick, and Larry; > balug-speaker-coordinators goes to about a half dozen of us that work on > (or at least try to track) speakers/presentations and the coordination > thereof). > > Let me/us know if you want to get added to our balug-speaker-coordinators > e-mail alias.

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Re: [Balug-admin] ed cherlin's on for Tuesday night
by Michael Paoli 16 Jul '07

16 Jul '07

I'll update the site and get the announcement out (not necessarily in that order). Quoting jim stockford <jim(a)well.com>: > Who's gonna announce to the balug-talk list? what > else is there to do in preparation (last-minute)? > jim

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Re: [Balug-admin] Immediate response needed (Re LinuxWorld Expo)
by Rick Moen 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

Re-sending because this seems to have gotten lost, the first time. Quoting jim stockford (jim(a)well.com) > ...of course! CABAL is a good common point. > Seems a need for an active point of communication > to coordinate LUGs for such things as LinuxWorld, > LinuxPicnic, maybe sharing speaker info.... Just for context, CABAL's own activities at present (aside from availability of its name to borrow as an umbrella ;-> ) is a medium traffic LUG mailing list called "conspire" (http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire) and twice-monthly meeting / installfest / barbecues in Menlo Park, 2nd and 4th Saturday evenings. (Next one is this Saturday, 4pm to midnight.) Communication to coordinate LUGs: If there is demand, I'd be willing to set up a mailing list for inter-LUG matters in the Bay Area. That's been tried before on other people's mail servers at least twice; both times, it didn't really work very well. Dumb politics is a severe risk on inter-group discussion fora, and unfortunately there are people in Bay Area LUGs who don't like or trust each other. Here is how I would run such a mailing list, and how in fact I run CABAL's and SVLUG's: o No mailing-list manager software munging of the Reply-To header. o Back-postings Web archive completely public; membership roster accessible to any subscriber. o No moderation or banning of any non-spammer, non-spewer subscriber, except in extraordinary circumstances that would be immediately disclosed to the membership (that I cannot anticipate, but might be, e.g., activity that would implicate the subscribership base in criminal activity). o "Spam" is defined as only what pretty much everyone agrees is such. o "Spew" is defined as persistent barraging of the mailing list with nonsense text or other massive text postings that pretty much everyone can agree is a mere text DoS attack, and not in any way legitimate postings. This would be like the "poetry bots" that in the past have auto-posted to some Usenet newsgroups in an effort to destroy them (e.g., alt.s*i*ntology). o All listadmin pronouncements (if any) will be clearly disclosed as speaking in that capacity. I.e., there will be no ambiguity about what role "hat" the listadmin is speaking in. Any in-force rules will be publicly disclosed on the Mailman listadmin page (what, e.g., http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire is for "conspire"). o No sanctioning of posters merely because other posters/subscribers express dislike of what the poster is saying. (No dumb primate politics carried out via the listadmin.) The listadmin's likely reaction to complaints about someone else's non-spam, non-spew postings will be to offer to teach the complainer how to use his/her killfile software, to avoid seeing what bothers him/her. My preferred listadmin style, in short, is minimal central control, minimal involvement of the listadmin in what people are permitted to do, and high transparency / avoidance of backroom dealings. Many people actually dislike that: They _want_ a listadmin who carefully controls the tone and content of the mailing list, who intensively manages people via off-list private-mail discussions about permitted behaviour, and who enforces a large number of unwritten rules, out of public sight. They _want_ a listadmin who breaks up arguments, declares threads "dead" if he judges them likely to offend or to have gone on too long, enforces civility with threats, and otherwise acts like the parent of misbehaving children. Those people, and their preferred sort of listadmin, tend towards introvert/passive-aggressiveness and a severely high-context style of communication. The listadmin in such groups is often called the "listmom". I _could_ name two Bay Area technical groups that currently have such (long-established, but undisclosed) styles of management for their mailing lists, and two that used to but don't anymore -- but won't. (The passive-aggressives who run, and used to run, respectively, those four groups specifically dislike _me_, among other people, because I'm far too in-your-face for their liking. I don't return their dislike in kind, which probably bugs them, too. ;-> ) LinuxWorld Conference and Expo: > Rick will probably have ideas and opinions. Coloured flyers for the LinuxWorld table, about the various groups, are a very good idea. Here's what I wrote on conspire in response to Jim's kind offer to have some CABAL literature at the table (quoted in case the suggestions are useful to others): ---<snip>--- From rick Tue Jul 10 19:24:39 2007 Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:24:39 -0700 To: conspire(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [conspire] anyone interested in helping represent Conspire at LinuxWorld Expo? Quoting jim stockford (jim(a)well.com) > If you'd like to put in a little time at the community > table (for LUGs) and/or have other ideas as to > how to promote the conspire mailing list or the > CABAL activities or anything else related, please > let me know ASAP--the IDG coordinator is finalizing > the table arrangements today or tomorrow. What would really be good, ye CABAL regulars, would be for one of you to prototype a brief informational flyer about CABAL, suitable for printing out and stacking at the LWCE community table for LUGs that Jim is speaking of. In my experience, the best physical format for a LUG flyer is quarter-sheet. That is, you design your flyer to have the same text in each of the four quarters of an 8.5 x 11" sheet, with matching backside text in the same configuration. You print, photocopy, and cut into quarters. Why? Because people tend to lose full letter-sized sheets, having picked up a million of them and inevitably losing them into ever-growing piles of same. By contrast, quarter-sheet flyers are kinda cute, and stand out. Trifold flyers are almost as good. If someone could (please) prototype a CABAL flyer and provide electronic copy, I'll make sure it gets to LWCE. (I'm really busy with work, and can't spare the time to design flyers right now.) ---<snip>--- Sharing speaker info: If you want, join the SVLUG "volunteers" mailing list, where speaker possibilities are discussed (http://lists.svlug.org/lists/listinfo/volunteers) SVLUG's cumulative memory for possible future speakers/topics is supposed to be the TBA page, http://www.svlug.org/tba.php . That is, when someone comes up with an idea for a future meeting, it's supposed to go there. Other SVLUG volunteers are _supposed_ to help maintain that page; they've mostly not helped, but I manage to keep the list pretty complete, unaided. (My point: Please _do_ "poach" SVLUG's possible-speakers list. This isn't a zero-sum game, they're not SVLUG property, and having the same speaker give a talk at multiple groups around the Bay Area is a _good_ thing, not a bad one. Disclaimer: I do not properly speak for SVLUG, and you should consult President Paul Reiber and VP Mark Weisler if you need official policy.) Additionally, _many_ good ideas for speakers can be found on SVLUG's "previous meetings" page, which is complete back to July 1997: http://www.svlug.org/prevmeet.php SVLUG has in the past had a "Speaker's Bureau" that specifically tried to share information with other groups. That isn't present per se at the moment, but less-formal coordination through lurking on the low-traffic volunteers list would probably suffice, just as well. (the ghost of) LinuxPicnic: The Linux Picnic was founded by a group of individuals in the Sunnyvale area as an event that was to be run _collectively_ by participating LUGs (plus one ham-radio group called South Bay Community Network, sbay.org, or Sbay), with none of them in sole charge of the event, and a picnic coordinator and treasurer managing the event and funds on behalf of all the groups, chosen annually by all the groups. Its Internet presence was at domain "linux10.org" for the first year (10th anniversary of Linux), and then one other (IIRC, linux11.org) and then eventually Drew Bertola registered linuxpicnic.org. In 2006, Henry House, J. Paul Reed, and I noticed that South Bay Community Network seemed to be acting as if the event had suddenly become solely theirs to administer, and other groups were merely to provide volunteer labour for their event. (Drew Bertola had unfortunately handed over the linuxpicnic.org domain to South Bay Community Network's then-president, who holds it to this day.) SVLUG (per SVLUG president J. Paul Reed) and CABAL (per me) agreed to participate in the 2006 picnic on the condition that the picnic would continue to be run jointly by all of the participating groups equally, that therefore the funds collected from sponsors would be those of the picnic and not grabbed by any one group, etc. Having secured SVLUG and CABAL's help with event staffing and publicity, South Bay Community Network then violated that condition: They ran the event as internal to sbay.org, established a "SIG Charter" for it without consulting any of the groups, established high-content-control rules for the picnic discussion mailing list[1] (again) without consulting any of the groups and with themselves in sole charge of list administration, and rolled the leftover funds into their own treasury. New South Bay Community Network president Heather Stern in 2007 asked for SVLUG's (and other groups') help with the 2007 picnic: I pointed out the ongoing bad faith and unilateral removal of the other groups from event planning / administration. Heather denied that anything had changed. I challenged her to make good on that: If you assert that I'm wrong, prove it: Solicit offers from the Bay Area Linux groups for a treasurer (Henry House of LUGOD or anyone else) to manage and spend the picnic's incoming funds on behalf of _all_ the constituent groups, and not just on behalf of Sbay. Then make clear that the picnic coordinator and treasurer are answerable to the numerous participating groups -- as was the case traditionally -- and not uniquely to Sbay. Heather made no reply whatsoever. We of the Bay Area Linux groups are valued only as a source of free labour and publicity. Thread starts here: http://lists.svlug.org/archives/volunteers/2007q1/000140.html In short, I'd love to put together a Bay Area Linux Picnic again, and think 2008 should be what we shoot for. (We'll need a new Internet domian.) Meanwhile, I'm certainly intending to attend the 2007 Sbay Picnic, and think it's really nice of a ham-radio group to furnish a barbecue picnic for Bay Area Linux users. What I'm not going to do is help staff or publicise that ham group's event, especially given their history of bad faith and their destruction of the community's participation. CABAL will not participate in Sbay's event, ditto. I hope that SVLUG won't, given the bad faith on the other side. [1] Among those: Any citation of postings there to elsewhere, impliedly even one's own, is considered an "actionable offense" meriting banning, etc. Also, the membership roster is available only to the listadmin, and the back-postings archive is hidden from public view. The listadmin has a history of silencing critics by gagging their on-list posting ability or ejecting them, and then not informing the list membership, allegedly sponsoring groups, or other responsible parties. This is of course a perfect example of the passive-aggressive "listmom" style of mailing list administration that I abhor. ----- End forwarded message -----

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Re: [Balug-admin] Immediate response needed (Re LinuxWorld Expo)
by Michael Paoli 11 Jul '07

11 Jul '07

Perhaps a bit late - or maybe not too late, ... Since there seems to be an open question of exactly what user groups will be represented and/or have volunteers at such booth(s) at LinuxWorld - and that might not even be known reasonably well in advance, perhaps a logical "group" to have such a combined booth under would be CABAL - Consortium of All Bay Area Linux That would leave enough flexibility to cover whatever groups end up participating, I would think. Anyway, just a thought. There might be "issues" with that in some ways, though, ... at least for LinuxWorld Expo ... for the .org pavilion, I think they require the "group" have a .org web site. I can't think of any other "gottcha's" that jump out at me off the top of my head. references/excerpts: http://linuxmafia.com/cabal/ Quoting jim stockford <jim(a)well.com>: > > > Dear LUG honcho, > > Would you like your LUG represented at LinuxWorld Expo? > If so, at the very least, let Briana know immediately > per email thread below. > > Please also, if you're inclined, let jim(a)well.com know. > I know that LUGOD is interested, tho' I can't speak for > them (Bill Kendricks may be able to). > > It would be helpful to us all to coordinate a bit, > maybe hand out each others' promo and educational > material, make sure the booth has someone at it as > often as possible (i.e. create and coordinate shifts). > > > -------------------------- > > From Briana: > I will hold off on ordering until tomorrow. > I appreciate your help. > > ____________________________ > Briana Pontremoli > Marketing Manager > IDG World Expo > 3 Speen Street, Suite 320 > Framingham, MA 01701

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