Hello PLUG and Linux-Aus,

Thought we'd try and get some PLUG news out to people about the events we're lining up at the moment. While the PLUG mailing list may be quiet, the PLUG committee is not!

February Presentation: Moodle, by Martin Dougiamas, Tuesday 14th Feb 7pm <at> Challenger Tafe, High St, Fremantle (opposite the markets)
Moodle (http://moodle.org/) is open source 'courseware', and is used by education institutions worldwide; its founder, Martin Dougiamas, lives in Perth, and his company that backs Moodle (http://moodle.com)is also based here. Live video stream should be available.

Debian Bug Squashing Party: Paul Wise, and Me!, Saturday 10th from 9am & Sunday 11th March <at> UCC, UWA (thanks to UCC)
With Debian Wheezy getting ready to ship, it's time for devs to squash bugs and resolve stuff. This is not a presentation - but a working party to fix things up, and share knowledge of how to do this. Come along to find out what makes Debian work (no, seriously). Interstate DDs are welcome to come and holiday in Perth for the weekend.

March Presentation: The National Broadband Network Panel Discussion, Tuesday 13th March 7pm <at> TBA
NBNCo CTO Chris Roberts, iiNet engineer Gavin Tweedie, and possibly AARNet representative(s) will field your questions to discuss and debate the technical implementation of the largest IT project the country will see in current times. Live video stream should be available.

March Plug in the Pub: The Linux & Open Source themed Quiz Night, Monday 26th March from 7pm <at> The Moon & Six Pence
The Quiz Night was lots of fun last year! Form tables of 4 with your friends and answer questions from the Open Source world.  We'll be selling tickets at the door this year at $5 each to cover the costs of some of the prizes we'll have. Come and show off what you know! (No video stream from the pub!)

April Presentation: AutoFS, by Ian Kent, Tuesday April 10th from 7pm <at> City West Lotteries House, 2 Delhi St, West Perth
Ian Kent is a PLUG member and works for Red Hat; he hacks on AutoFS by day. Live video stream should be available.

May Presentation: Paul Fenwick, Tuesday May 1st, from 7pm <at> City West Lotteries House, 2 Delhi St, West Perth
Paul is a Perl hacker, and gave a keynote at Linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat on programming people. He works for Perl Training Australia, writes in The Perl Journal, contributes to Perl core, and has a bunch of code on CPAN. Note that this is on the FIRST Tuesday of the month, not the second. Live video stream should be available.

June Presentation: Amazon Web Services (tentative), Tuesday June 12th, from 7pm <at> City West Lotteries House, 2 Delhi St, West Perth



Other than the Quiz Night, these events are free to attend - bring friends, colleagues, or people you'd like to impress. All these events are in the PLUG calendar on www.plug.org.au - including directions to the venue(s). As always, we need volunteers to help organise events, and we're constantly having to try and convince our on-list lurkers to pay their membership fees (hint hint - $20/year full, $10/year concession; http://www.plug.org.au/membership/)!

  James
PS: Cross posted to Linux-Aus as people may wish to watch the video streams - or come and visit!
PPS: Feedback off-list welcome

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Wouldn't it be great if all the LUGs could send out announcements like this?

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Date: 9/2/12

Project Name: Gold Coast Tech Space

Aim of Project: Promote Open Collaboration in tech community on the Gold Coast

Person Responsible for Request: Steve Dalton

Request: We recently formed the Gold Coast TechSpace (late 2011) - a collaborative space based on the Hackerspace Model. The project is going quite well, we have a large unit in Southport, have incorporated as a Association and have an active committee. We also have a small but growing membership base. Our setup is slightly different to other hackerspaces; half of the space is typical hackerspace projects - Electronics, hardware hacking, 3D printing (we just finished our first Reprap) etc. The other half is more of a "Lab" for people to come and spend time working on their projects (predominantly Open Source) and learn (workshops and community based training are in the works)

Part of the way we helped setup the space was to offer Founding Partnerships to local businesses and institutions to help us bootstrap the space. We initially had 3 partners which helped pay for the Bond on the property, ongoing rent while membership built to sustainable levels, benchtops and some equipment.

Our 4th partner that has just come on board is Griffith Uni, and we did have a 5th, a local web mobile development company that were going to base themselves from the space but this fell through. I was going to replace this 5th one with the Gold Coast City Council, but with local elections looming it seems that purse strings are tightly drawn!

Founding membership costs $3500 per year and with that they get
- Full membership for 3 of their employees/members/students (normally costs $100/month)
- Your logo on the sign on the front of the space for the lifetime of the space (not just 1st year)
- Logo and links on main website gctechspace.org and meetup.com/gctechspace

I am looking for another local partner, but as we are planning on doing a :LOT of Linux and FLOSS advocacy at the space nd our local LUG also meets at the space, I was wondering if having Linux Australia as a partner might be a possibility.

I realise that LA is not National and the 3 membership are not really useful, but I was thinking these could be gifted to local Gold Coasters doing good work in the Linux/FLOSS community. 2 local nominations I could think of off the top of my head are Ben Martin who is a committer to Abiword and libFerris file system (speaker at recent LCA on this topic)  and Triffid Hunter who is heavily involved with RepRap.

A lot of people in Australia think of the Gold Coast as all about Tourism and property development, and this is partially true, our economy is very narrow at the moment. However, there is also a thriving tech community just desperate to break out. I am hoping the Gold Coast TechSpace will be a hub for this. A large Cultural Precinct is currently being planned on the Coast for 2015, final completion 2018 when the Commonwealth Games arrives. Part of this precinct is a 6000m2 cultural centre and I have a (loose) commitment from the  Council that the Gold Coast Tech Space will get a decent amount of space in this precinct. Until then, we just need to prove the concept and get it nicely sustainable.

In terms of what the money would probably be spent on - we currently do not have anywhere enough power points, so around $1000 would be paying the electrician. We would also like to get a projector for user groups to present with and use at Barcamps (which I am regular organiser of). We will also have a full lab of PCs (donated from City Council) which I am hoping to get extra monitors for so that we can do full pairing with our programming workshops. Lots of other thing - but this gives you an idea.

If you have any further questions - feel free to email me back. I can also be contacted on the mobile on 0414 464564

Regards
Steve Dalton
President, Gold Coast TechSpace 

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