Michael:
I think your mini-bio looks pretty good. The bio from his blog is also worth considering. (see the bio/link below) Its your call, either way is fine by me. As for timing, lets aim for Tuesday evening to see if I hear back with a talk abstract or title.
I'll also "ask" ("please") / remind folks to RSVP.
The text immediately below from the Feb13 Bruce Perens announcement was very effective at driving RSVPs... In the Feb13 message, I changed it from previous messages and noticed a spike in RSVPs. I suspect this was because it helped people understand why the RSVPs are important. Feel free to borrow or modify it if you like.
<Feb13 Excerpt> So, if you'd like to come, its time to get your RSVP in:
RSVP at balug.org
**Why RSVP??**
Well, don't worry we won't turn you away, but the RSVPs really help the Four Seas Restaurant plan the meal and they ensure that we're able to eat upstairs in the private banquet room. </Feb13 Excerpt>
I intend to also include brief mentions (with links/references) on:
The 2008-03-01 Installfest for Schools
LugRadio Live USA 2008 in San Francisco
If its all the same to you, I'd like to jump on an Installfest for Schools on Balug_Talk later in the week. I'd also suggest that we do a separate post for LugRadio Live on Talk. LugRadio Live looks like a great event and I'll be manning the Untangle booth, so I totally support it, but my general preference is to keep the message focused on one topic. I'll defer to your judgement in the body of the announcement, but I definitely wouldn't put it in the subject line... which is the most important part of any email.
-Andrew
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/biography
"Mark is founder of the Ubuntu Project, an enterprise Linux distribution that is freely available worldwide and has both cutting-edge desktop and enterprise server editions, and has become very popular.
Mark studied finance and information technology at the University of Cape Town, and went on to found Thawte, a company specialising in digital certificates and cryptography. He sold Thawte to US company VeriSign in 1999, and founded HBD Venture Capital and The Shuttleworth Foundation. He moved to London in 2001, and began preparing for the First African in Space mission, training in Star City, Russia, and Khazakstan. In April 2002 Mark flew in space, as a cosmonaut member of the crew of Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space Station. In early 2004 he founded the Ubuntu project, which aims to produce a free, high quality desktop OS for everybody."
---------------------------------------- Andrew Fife Untangle - Open Source Security Gateway download.untangle.com
650.425.3327 (O) 415.806.6028 (C) afife@untangle.com