[TriLUG] presentation ideas

[Scott Chilcote]

Alan Porter wrote:
> 
> Hi folks,

> 
> So here's a chance for you to shout out an idea, or perhaps even
> volunteer yourself for a presentation.
> 
> Just so you know, the pipeline right now has one confirmed speaker
> (for September), and a lot of "TBD".
> 
> And if that's not enough motivation for you, if a meeting date
> approaches and we still have not found a speaker, you guys will
> have to sit through an hour of me talking about PAM, Pluggable
> Authentication Modules.
> 
> Alan

Thanks Alan,

I think that the LUG would draw a fair amount of attention from outside 
of our own community if we introduced a few topics of general interest.

We have an opportunity right now due to the public reaction to Windows 
Vista, to demonstrate the continually improving value of Linux as a 
alternative desktop platform.

One or more meeting topics that objectively survey the viability of the 
current set of productivity and business oriented applications would be 
an easy choice.  Looking over the last year and a half of meetings, I 
think this popular topic is overdue.

Google has done a lot of recent work on applications for Linux that are 
popular on Windows.  People may not be aware that they can switch to 
Linux and continue using Google Earth, Picasa, G-talk and others. 
Several desktop apps are pretty amazing now as well, like BitPim, GIMP, 
Audacity, blender, and Scribus.

You can read a lot of articles about how good Linux is doing as a 
desktop, but if we give people an opportunity to come and see it for 
themselves and ask questions we'll be providing a real service to the 
general public.
____________________________

Idea #2: Software development tools for Linux.  Software still keeps 
much of the Triangle's professionals employed.  A survey of the current 
state of software development tools for Linux would provide another 
useful workshop to help people in the region discover what they can 
accomplish professionally if they consider migrating to Linux.

Granted, people who develop for proprietary, operating system specific 
environments are not in a position to consider Linux as an alternative. 
  But much software development is platform independent now, and tools 
for platform agnostic software development continue to improve for Linux.
The Eclipse and NetBeans IDEs are flagship examples, supporting several 
  programming languages and providing large libraries of plugins.

MySQL and PostgreSQL and their associated tools, Subversion, QT4, 
Screem, Quanta, Geany...  Some of these I've only heard about.  The 
viability of Linux as a development platform has never been in doubt 
from my perspective.  But there are a lot of software professionals who 
have not used anything but Windows, and may be interested in seeing 
what's available now.
___________________________

Idea #3: This topic has come up before, but I've yet to see it addressed 
in one of our meetings.  There is a fair amount of GIS, Geographical 
Mapping, and GPS related software available for Linux now.  Including my 
cell phone, we currently have five different GPS appliances in our 
household.  The only obvious way to take advantage of these devices is 
with proprietary software that only runs on commercial operating systems.

By asking people and searching around, I have come across a few programs 
for Linux that provide some of the capabilities of these proprietary 
programs.  Every so often I hear about another project that intends to 
provide more capabilties.

I'm not sure how large the audience for this kind of information would 
be, but I'm very interested in finding out more about the state of GIS, 
Mapping, and GPS applications for Linux.  GIS is also a career area for 
me, so it would help professionally as well.
____________________________

Since these are areas I would like to learn more about, I can't claim to 
have the knowledge level necessary to present one of these topics.  If 
someone else feels capable, It's not my intention to reserve them. 
Another possibility would be to join forces with someone else for a 
shared presentation.

The first two of these topics are overviews, so they might be effective 
to present as a roundtable discussion with a few experienced presenters 
and a moderator.

Thanks for asking.

--
Scott C.