[TriLUG] Red Hat Launches Nation's First K-12 Red Hat Linux Education Program; Helps Improve Computing Access for All Students

[Chris Hedemark]

On Wed, 2002-05-08 at 11:20, Kevin - The Alchemist - Sonney wrote:
> Actually, we're finishing up the webmail now, and it'll be done in time
> for tomorrow's meeting, we think. The kicker is the authentication.

Is there an MTA in place?

> Since there's no ssh to stonesoup - just webmail and IMAP - we can
> better control security on what is potentially an insecure box.

What's wrong with ssh?

> I've got a laundry list in my head of to-dos right now for next year,
> including at least one InstallFest per quarter, rebuilding the
> educational effort, and getting some funding to help with all that.

I think a lot of that all goes back to having leadership in place.  It's
one thing to declare "We're going to have an installfest every quarter"
but it is quite another thing to actually have an installfest every
quarter.  I think we suffered a great loss when Ed Hill moved away, but
this weekend will be a good indicator as to how well we'll bounce back
in his absence.  I'm still hoping to take HAHT up on their offer to host
an installfest (perhaps this fall?) and I think it is a good thing to
have different volunteers lead the installfest efforts.  The only thing
I'd like to see out of the SC is someone to try to drum up the
volunteers and periodically make sure they're going to be ready for the
event they are leading.

Funding?  I don't know if funding is a big problem.  The software we
install is free.  The schools we would work with do have technology
budgets (and apparently Orange County has a healthy enough budget to
throw away several tractor trailer loads of Pentium-class PC's with
perfectly good SVGA monitors).  Cash in the pizza coffers would be
nice.  Other than that, I think it is a great example for the community
how much we can do with so little money.  IMHO it's great punctuation
for the statement about open source reducing licensing costs if we can
show the community we eat what we cook for next to no money spent.

The thing I was working on part-time on fatalpha was a bug tracking
system to manage to-do's, but it was geared more towards development
projects.  I'd like to refocus that towards any sort of volunteer
projects going on within the LUG to help ease the pains of coordinating
volunteers (which is very much like herding cats).

One thing I would very much like to see more of in the coming year is
more focus on services from our server farm and less focus on security. 
Don't get me wrong.  Security is important.  But I think there was so
much focus on security with fatalpha that the services it provided were
not terribly convenient to use (especially the ftp mirror, which doesn't
use ftp at all).  I'd like the next SC to take more of an approach of
"what service do we want to provide?  and what is the most responsible
way to do it?"  Over the years I've been able to contribute somewhat to
that goal, for example setting up and maintaining the Mailman mailing
list services that handle this mailing list and others for the LUG.  If
elected onto the SC, I would like to further extend the services
available to TriLUG members on our servers and make the existing
services more accessible.
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