[TriLUG] presentation ideas

[Brian Phelps]

beagleboard anyone?

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 1:15 PM, Allen Freeman<knieveltech at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If there is sufficient interest level within the group I'm pretty confident that we could get the Drupal User's Group to do a presentation on Drupal.
>
> --- On Tue, 6/16/09, Scott Chilcote <scottchilcote at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> From: Scott Chilcote <scottchilcote at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] presentation ideas
> To: "Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion" <trilug at trilug.org>
> Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 7:40 PM
>
> 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.
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