charter for LUG (Re: [NCLUG] i don't give a toss about ISPs)

[Bob Goates]

I've been subscribed to the NCLUG list for a few years now, and have
appreciated the give and take and the occasionally useful (to me)
information on the list.  And I actually made it to one of the
meetings.  The timing and location of the meetings make it a little hard
for me to participate, though, being in Cheyenne.

John's suggestions for a local "home brew" club and something like SVNet
sound GREAT to me!  I would like to be involved with both of them. 
Robotics seems like too much fun to miss out on, and even though
BattleBots isn't exactly robotics perhaps we could gradually move the
competition in that direction.  Or start another one.  And the idea of a
large group project sounds fun.

And a "Northern Colorado Network" could be really useful.  I've learned
some things during my software career that I'd like to share with
others, and I like the prospect of benefiting from the hard won usable
knowledge of others.  One thing I've learned is that the common "wisdom"
and practice of industry (and academics, possibly) is frequently just so
much bologna.  Propagating and refining more useful knowledge and
practice would be a boon to the world.  (The Network should allow plenty
of opportunity for personal and group debate to help with the "refining"
part.)

And for both groups, the meeting times should be set to accomodate
people from the Denver area, Cheyenne, and Laramie.  UW has some pretty
good engineering and software people.  And there are a few in Cheyenne,
believe it or not.

In other words, count me in, John!

Bob Goates

"John L. Bass" wrote:
...
> The home brew club was really fun, spanning a wide range of hardware
> and software interestes ... which is why I proposed last year maybe
> spinning up such a group as a side to NCLUG. It would be a great
> forum to get involved in possibly robotics (battlebots, and sponser
> a team) or do some follow on projects regarding soft core cpus that
> support linux (there are several alread on the net). It has a different
> focus than the hacker's society ... a strong target of working toward
> a mutual goal(s), rather than strictly a place to hang out while
> working on individual projects.
...
> If there are other hardware/software geeks out there, I'm still interested
> in starting a local home brew computer group, or maybe a battlebot team.
> 
> Since NCLUG has different goals, it might be worth forming a broader
> technical professional group similar to SVNet - maybe NCNet (Northern
> Colorado Network) that targets a broad range of technical professionals
> in the area - and search out speakers to give research and industry level
> talks on computing, electronics, networking, and technology business
> issues. With 3,000-4,000 high end technical professionals local, and
> another 1-2K students and industry related professionals it shouldn't
> be too hard to attract quality speakers that would make a 200-300 head
> count group stable and successful. Maybe pushing the talks back an hour
> in the evening, to make it easier to bring in folks from Wy, and Denver
> which would triple the potential audience size.
...