Okay, ...
An available speaker/presentation that would likely go over well and be rather/quite useful, and perhaps we could draw in a fair (to largeish?) crowd of folks, ...
Shell Programming (or Shell Scripting or ... anyway, whatever precise title gets picked) ...
I think last time, at least prior to this month, that was brought up / mentioned / suggested for a meeting presentation, it was well under a year after we'd had quite similar (at least in terms of general topic) speaker and presentation: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2004-August/002877.htm... (why that was on the talk list, and apparently not the announce list is another matter) and I thought it would be rather redundant to cover something rather to quite similar so soon, ... but now, ... it's been, ... well, it'll be about a year by this September's BALUG meeting, and over a year by the October meeting.
Anyway, the presentation and approach, etc. is comparatively different than Mark G. Sobell's, so even if the topic's been done for a presentation as recently as 2004-09-21, it's sufficiently different in delivery and materials, etc. that it shouldn't be horribly redundant for those that may have also caught the 2004-09-21 presentation.
Let's see, ... and when, ... 2005-09-20 or 2005-10-18 or later may be possibilities, ... but may not be able to confirm date until approximately early-ish September.
Feedback on the materials and such have been quite positive, e.g. including quotes such as: "I've attended other scripting classes, one taught by a professional instructor and one by a PhD. Neither of these compare to what <presenter> was able to accomplish." (that was for a compact one-day presentation and mini-lab on that topic and those materials by presenter).
Oh, ... and what presenter? That Michael Paoli person again, a.k.a. yours truly.
Anyway, I've done presentation (and mini-lab) as a dayish long thing (I think it was <~=6 hours, including lab time and exercises), ... have also done preparations before for doing it as presentations somewhere in the range of an hour or two. Anyway, without "lab" and exercises and such (but perhaps with some tiny mini-demos) I could whittle and squeeze it to within <~=75 minutes (which is about as much "real" presentation time as we end up with at BALUG meetings).
The most noteworthy question (or question mark) is when. I've got a wildcard on my calendar that might land most any place mid-September through October on my calendar at present, so might not be able to commit to September or October BALUG meeting date until perhaps as late as nearly mid-September for September, and might not know until later for October. November, December, January, and February BALUG meeting dates would likely be safe dates to target if we wanted to schedule it that far in advance (I'd have to double check my calendar, but most likely those dates are all clear (or clearable) at this point in time.)
So, ... anyway, what do you all think regarding cut-off date for announcement and such? Certainly more lead time is better to let folks know and plan and mark their calendars and such, but a reasonable yay or nay deadline date to plan for and announce a speaker? ... maybe we want to try and answer that question in general - then perhaps answering the specific case at hand follows logically from the general answer.
I suppose in cases where leading right up to the meeting, we don't have a speaker/presenter lined up, we could still have someone show up relatively last minute as available to do a presentation ... but probably need at *least* a few days for most folks to even catch the announcement and possibly show up, and preferably week(s) or more for most folks that would want to come to any specific presentation to be able to mark and/or clear/arrange their calendars so that they'd be able to come. And where we have opportunity to schedule and announce a speaker/presenter reasonably well in advance, as opposed to quite last minute(/hour/day/...) arrangements, it's probably much preferable to get them scheduled and announced suitably in advance.
So, ... yes, I can certainly do a presentation on shell scripting/programming, but mostly a matter of confirming a suitable BALUG meeting date, and being able to confirm it sufficiently well in advance as to be rather to quite useful.
Anyway, I can put together text that can be used for an "announcement" to be sent out (and web page blurbs, etc.) when we've got a confirmed "go" date.
Maybe we could even manage to have someone other than the presenter send the announce e-mail out when such a time comes - might at least look a hair more objective. :-)
references/excerpts: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2004-August/002877.htm... http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-admin-balug.org/2005-April/000027.h... http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-admin-balug.org/2005-May/000028.htm... http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/2005-May/000032.ht... http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2005-May/003288.html http://www.rawbw.com/~mp/linux/lvm/balug/ (I still have some tweaks/updates to upload to stuff around that URL above)