Well, not quite confirmed yet, but at the moment it looks rather to quite probable I'll be able to do shell presentation at the 2005-10-18 BALUG meeting. I'll likely be able to have a confirmation on availability for that date within the next several days or so (i.e. probably have update and likely confirmation by <~= 2005-09-05). I'd probably also provide some suitable text blurbs (e.g. for web site, and draft for announcement(s), etc.) at or around that time too.
Presuming I'm able to confirm, as I likely anticipate, I might also suggest for the announce list, when we send out "reminder" for the Sept. meeting, we could include a rather to quite brief blurb about the Oct. meeting presentation. I'd suggest it be relatively brief so as not to detract from the Sept. meeting (e.g. if the Sept. meeting announcement/ reminder did more to promote the Oct. meeting than the Sept. meeting, folks could be relatively discouraged to go to the Sept. meeting - especially if we don't have presentation/speaker lined up for Sept. meeting). Then a bit after the Sept. meeting, we could send out an announcement having more details about the Oct. meeting.
So, ... watch this space for updates. :-)
Quoting Michael Paoli:
Uhm, ... (rearranging quotes a bit) ... that's nice, but did you read what I wrote? :-) (okay, so it was a bit long) ... I can at least pencil myself in for that date (2005-10-18), but may not be able to confirm that date for a fair while yet. Perhaps I'll know quite a bit more about my schedule in the upcoming weeks, ... but then again some of it may not be settled for a fair while yet.
Nov., Dec., Jan., Feb. BALUG meetings are meeting dates I could almost certainly make. Sept., Oct. (and to a lesser extent Mar. - Jun. 2006) are still rather uncertain.
Quoting Dick Verna:
Thank you for volunteering to speak. The date for your presentation is October 18th, 2005. That is the third Tuesday of the month.
Dick Verna
Michael Paoli wrote:
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.)
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).
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)