Wow, time moves quickly!

For anybody who needs a reminder, we've got out second ever TasLUG statewide gathering happening at the Ross Town Hall this weekend.

This is a chance for people from all around the state to come together and get to know/share knowledge with other Free/Open Source Software enthusiasts. People are encouraged to bring along a machine or a laptop or a mobile device or whatever's applicable to share with the community the sort of things they do with Free/Open Source Software.

Saturday May 4th
Ross Town Hall

Our rough schedule looks something like this:
* 10:00pm - 12:00pm: Mill around, get to know each other, show off any gear/projects we may have brought with us
* 12:00pm - 1:00pm: Break for lunch
* 1:00pm - 1:30pm: Housekeeping/Statewide committee stuff
* 1:30pm - 3:00pm: Presentations/lightning talks for anybody who wants to give one
* 3:30pm - 4:00pm: Pack up
* 4:00pm onwards: Go home/BBQ/whatever anybody is up for

Google Maps link

Hope to see everybody there!

Nominations for the statewide commitee have been received and we now have a poll up to confirm the uncontested positions and collect votes on the remaining ones.

The following positions were uncontested:
* President: Craige McWhirter (ruagair)
* Treasurer: Scott Bragg (mrfaulteh)
* Media Muse: Mathew Oakes

Congratulations to Craige, Scott and Mathew.

Nominees for the two remaining "Community Champion" positions are:
* Scott Bragg (mrfaulteh)
* Scott Evans (VK7HSE)
* Chris Neugebauer (chrisjrn)
* Tim Serong (tserong)


The poll can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GC7TKRZ

To reduce the impact of spam/duplicate votes, we are asking people to provide an email address that is associated with a TasLUG website account, or a TasLUG mailing list subscription (both are worth having anyway, and signup links can be found on this site). These email addresses will not be used for anything other than removing invalid/duplicate votes. Addresses will also not be associated with votes and the data will be destroyed at the end of the poll.

Many thanks to "returning officer" bleeter for coordinating this!

Please discuss further on the mailing list or in the forums.

Good evening freedom lovers! It's time for us to nominate people to represent us on the TasLUG committee!

Returning Officer:
We need a volunteer to be our returning officer. This role will need to:

• Track nominations and acceptances on the TasLUG list.
• Follow up privately any nominations not responded to on the list
• Run a public poll[1][2]
• Publish the results at the Statewide Meeting on May 4th[3]

The Positions:

• President
• Treasurer
• Media Muse
• Community Champion (x2)

There's 5 roles to fill in total, so get your nominations rolling in to the TasLUG list.

Timelines:
Nominations:

• Open: 09:00 Monday, April 1st
• Close: 23:59 Sunday, April 14th

Voting:

• Opens: 09:00 Monday, April 15th
• Closes: 23:59 Sunday, April 28th

Eligibility:
Committee:

• You are on the TasLUG list or
• You have an account on the TasLUG website
• Must be a Tasmanian resident

Voting:

• You are on the TasLUG list or
• You have an account on the TasLUG website[4][5]

Notes:

1. There's plenty of ways to do this. Pick one that works for you or ask the list for suggestions. Preferably available via link only
2. Email address will be a required field for cross-verification
3. This can be done remotely or via email on the 4th (preferably in some co-ordination with events of the day)
4. The committee can review and loosen / tighten this in future as seen fit. GPG signed nominations and votes would rock.
5. No, if you are on both you do not get two votes :-D

Hi all! It's nearly time again for the (now) Annual Statewide TasLUG Gathering, and what better way to announce it than with a block of where/when followed by a bunch of bulleted lists!


ROSS TOWN HALL
4th May
10:00am - 4:00pm
Google Maps Link

Building on from last year's event, the Statewide Gathering will be a chance for:
* Everybody to bring along something that shows off stuff that do with Free/Open Source Software (everything is interesting - especially uninteresting stuff)
* Free Software enthusiasts from across the state to catch up and get to know each other
* TasLUG communities to plan for Software Freedom Day 2013


We're also planning to have:
* Best of TasLUG talks - a recap of favourite talks from the past year (we'll have a poll up soon)
* A lightning talks session allowing people to briefly present the stuff they've brought along
* A TasLUGer(s) of the year acknowledgment, recognising people within our community who do worthwhile things


Also on the cards is:
* Finishing up early and having a BBQ
* A brainstorming session for possible collaborative hardware/software projects that could involve people across the state


Anybody who has goodies (stickers) or paraphernalia (stickers) that they want to share around (stickers), feel free to bring them. Somebody has requested stickers (stickers).

Hope to see you there!

G'day everyone

You may recall that we were planning to have a vote on the future direction of TasLUG at the state-wide gathering. After discussion, we decided to assemble a steering committee to help guide us through that process.

The first task of this steering committee has been to put together a document that outlines the pros and cons of each of the three options before us. That document can be found in our forums.

The voting period has been stretched out till the 13th of May, and the voting form can still be found here.

(note: if you tick either of the boxes saying you'd like to be involved in helping run things at a local or state level and choose to not put any contact details in, you'll need to make sure you keep track of updates yourself as we get closer to formalising things)