[TriLUG] this week - steering committee elections, vote on new by-laws and AoI

[Alan Porter]

Reminder... This Thursday is the May TriLUG meeting, and that is
the time for steering committee elections.

Our current list of nominations is on the wiki here:
http://trilug.org/wiki/Steering_Committee_2013-2014_Nominations

Note that to view this page, you have to enter user=TRI and 
password=LUG.
This is our ultra-cheap-but-very-effective wiki spam prevention system.




There has not been a lot of chatter on the email list this past month
about elections.  I'm not sure if folks are shy about volunteering,
or if we (the present and past steering committee members) have been
lax in our announcements about how the process works.

HOW THE PROCESS WORKS:

If you're interested in helping out the LUG as a steering committee
member, just say so here on the mailing list.  Or add your name to the
wiki (in order to edit the wiki, you have to have a wiki account... 
that
is not the same as your shell login... it's just like any other wiki
where you register on the wiki itself).

WHAT DOES THE STEERING COMMITTEE DO?

Basically, you just have to give a damn.  It's not much more than that.

There are some things that the steering committee keeps track of,
arranges, etc.  You'll get on a weekly meeting (usually via IM or IRC
or Google Hangout) and you'll check in to make sure that those things
are being addressed.  Sometimes it's sysadmin stuff like making sure
our equipment is up-to-date.  Sometimes it's grunt work, like ordering
pizza for the meetings or setting up and taking down signs.  Sometimes
it's just listing to what members talk about and remembering to bring
that up for discussion later.  Occasionally the SC gets pulled into
administrative stuff like setting up bank accounts or filing paperwork.

And every once in a while, one of us goes all crazy and volunteers to 
be
the coordinator for an event like BarCampRDU (thanks, Jeremy).

The job does not usually take up much time per week... maybe an hour
for a meeting and a few minutes during the week for stuff like writing
emails or calling someone.

Don't worry about not knowing how to run a LUG.  The day-to-day details
are all written down in the steering committee's "Book of Secrets" 
wiki.
Even down to the exact thing say when ordering pizza from Marco's.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BE ON THE STEERING COMMITTEE?

It's a great way to contribute to the open source community in a way
other than the traditional code-writing and code-debugging way.  Plus,
you meet a bunch of people, you become known in the group as a doer
of great things.



So if you've been thinking about helping out the LUG, now is the time 
to
speak up.


Alan Porter
steering committee member emeritus