Recently MeetUp, a then free group organizing web service, has decided to charge registered groups for its services. A Meetup meeting organizer must now pay $19 a month to use their software. Having spent the last 8-9 months as the organizer for the Northern NJ Linux Meetup I’m somewhat saddened by the fact that this move will most definitely mean the end of the group. Averaging 3 members for ever meeting we’ve had so far (with the exception of the day I brought someone from Ubuntu Linux to gives us a talk… that day we had 7 members!

Ever since MeetUp announced they would start charging groups money to use their free service, I started thinking of possible alternatives to keep the Northern NJ Linux Meetup group alive. I understand that everyone is entitled to make a living but I don’t agree with their decision of making this drastic change of heart without any warnings. I have spoken to some people and read some posts/comments online and came to the conclusion that the smaller groups will most likely vanish in the turmoil.

This month’s Northern NJ Linux MeetUp meeting had the highest attendance so far since I became the organizer: 7, including myself and our guest speaker Mako. He was kind enough to accept my invitation to visit and tell us about his work with Ubuntu and Debian Linux. I think everyone had a good time! Mako seems to be a really nice guy and was more than willing to answer our questions.

It’s official!!! I have arranged for Benjamin Mako Hill, Debian and Ubuntu Linux package maintaner/contributer, to attend our next Northern New Jersey Meetup meeting this Monday 11th, 2005! I have asked him to talk about Ubuntu Linux and also his involvement with Debian. This should be a very interesting meeting for everyone and I urge everyone to show up! Make sure to reserve your spot so I have a good idea of how many people will be present.

I completely forgot to mention about this last Thursday’s first Open Source Alliance meeting at Paramus' Panera Bread. I arrived earlier than everybody else despite the really bad traffic on Route 4 West. The place was really crowded and I couldn’t set up my laptop at the “usual” place by the conference room. I ended up going to the couch by the front entrance. Armed with a hot cup of coffee I proceeded to get boot my laptop and get some internet going… About 15 minutes later I realized something fishy was going on with the free wifi for I just could not get a working IP assigned.

Following up on a previous post, my good friend Steve Goguen has officially registered The Northern NJ Open Source Alliance. It will be an attempt to bring all the other “geeky” MeetUp groups from Northern New Jersey together into a an unified one. We should hear back soon from some of the other MeetUp organizers and work something out. I think the goal is to schedule all our individual meetings to coincide on the same dates.

This past Monday I hosted the monthly Northern New Jersey Linux Meetup at Panera Bread. It is the 7th meeting I have organized ever since taken over the group back in September 2004. I managed to get there earlier than usual and took advantage of the extra time to write down some ideas I had for a new pet project of mine and get some good coffee. One hour later some of the frequent attendees arrived.