[ Triangle Linux Users Group ]

Topic: FabLab
Presenter: Drew Nelson
When: Thursday, October 13th, 7pm
Where: Red Hat HQ, NCSU Centennial Campus
Map: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html
Permalink: http://trilug.org/2011-10-13/fablab

Drew will take us through the challenges and rewards of using Open Source software at FabLab.

Fab labs provide widespread access to modern means for invention. They began as an outreach project from MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.

When: Thursday, August 11th, 7pm
Where: Red Hat HQ, NCSU Centennial Campus
Map: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html

One of the coolest parts about TriLUG is how the members share their
projects with the rest of the group. Most of the TriLUG meeting presentations
over the last year have been given by members, not by outside guests.
But, geeks that we are, many of us are more comfortable in front of a laptop
(or a green screen terminal) than we are in front of a crowd.
We feel that the guy up front must have a knack for speaking, or maybe
he had a class on it. What does it take to be a good speaker?

Alan Hoffler was teaching technical courses at SAS, and teaching other
trainers how to teach, when he realized that his true passion was teaching
communication skills. This month, Alan will show us that giving a good
technical presentation is not that hard to do. In fact, it's something that
any of us can do.

We are very excited about having this crash course in technical presentation
skills, because we rely on our members for many of our programs. And
many of us are asked to give technical presentations at work as well.

About the speaker:
Alan D. Hoffler
Trainer, Speaker, Consultant, Coach

Raised around America's Space Program, Alan Hoffler has earned
degrees in aerospace engineering and applied mathematics and never
bothered to pursue a living in either field. At some point in his 20 years
of training technical corporate audiences, instructing in the college
classroom, teaching public high school, and speaking nationally to pilots
about flying safety he became passionate about helping others
communicate more effectively. He believes that communication has the
power to change a person, an organization, a community, and the world.
When he’s not speaking or training, he stays active serving in the local
chapter of his professional organization, supporting activities and
instructing in his local church, and enjoying the privileges of his
commercial pilot’s license. His blog identifies solutions to common
communication foibles and highlights his analytical eye and desire to
improve himself as well as his clients. His most challenging training
endeavor is also his most enjoyable – raising two children – and is the
basis of a forthcoming book on fatherhood.

When: Thursday, July 14th, 7pm
Where: Red Hat HQ, NCSU Centennial Campus
Map: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html

Zero configuration networking allows machines on a network to publish their capabilities for others to use, without requiring an administrator to specifically list those services in a directory.

TriLUG member Jym Williams-Zavada will be taking a look at two zeroconf services, AirPrint and mDNS. Both of these technologies were introduced by Apple, and now they are gaining support on other platforms as well.

AirPrint allows you to publish the presence of a printer, and then allow devices to print to it. The quintessential use case is printing from an iPhone or iPad.

Similarly, mDNS publishes the presence of other services on a network. Perhaps you have a public shared drive where you store your music.

Jym will show us how to configure both of these services on a Linux machine.

Jym Williams-Zavada has been a member of TriLUG since he moved to NC from Syracuse, where he was active in SyrLUG. He served on the TriLUG steering committee last year. Jym currently works as a system administrator at Shodor in Durham.

When: Thursday, June 9th, 7pm
Where: Red Hat HQ, NCSU Centennial Campus
Map: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html

Android has taken the mobile market by storm, in part due to its open source nature (did you know it is based on the Linux kernel?). However, Android development has had to walk a delicate line between developers demanding openness and the established mobile industry that prefers to lock everything down.

In this talk, Luke will introduce Android as a mobile development platform, discussing the architecture and development tools available, as well as the history of how Android has walked the line between open and closed.

Luke Meyer, web geek and open source zealot, started TriDroid, the Triangle Android Meetup, because no one else had done so yet when he wanted to start hacking for his G1 phone. He currently works technical support for SpringSource at VMware. Previously he worked as a web engineer at Red Hat.