Meetup on Og Maciel's Journal

About MeetUp Change of Heart

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

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!), it just doesn’t make sense for me to fork out the money. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting my own Linux User Group but it seems to me that:

Mailing List Software

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

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. Having been the organizer of my group for the last 8 months, I’d really hate to see it go away. So I was thinking of setting up a mailing list / calendaring system where people who are still interested in meeting monthly to talk about Linux can sign up and be informed of events, etc.

Northern NJ Linux MeetUp - April 11th, 2005

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

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. At the end of the night I drove him back across the G.W. Bridge and extended an invitation for a repeat in the near future.

Benjamin Mako Hill

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

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. Right now I am thinking of meeting at the front of the store (Panera Bread, Route 4 West Paramus, NJ @ 7pm) where there are some couches and lots of plugs! If the number of people reserving increases, I’ll try to reserve the conference room!

Open Source Alliance - March 24th, 2005

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

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. I also realized that nobody had shown up yet. Another 10 minutes went by and I just completely gave up on the wifi and took a walk to the back of Panera to see if anybody was there… I started to wonder if the meeting had been set to meet at a different Panera Bread, the one on 17 North. Luckly there were 4 guys already there with their laptops. I quickly grabbed my stuff and joined them for a very short meeting. Without the wifi access and having only 20+ minutes left we didn’t really get much accomplished. Steve (Open Source Alliance’s organizer), Murph (Slashdot’s organizer) and I (for those who don’t know, I’m the organizer for the Northern NJ Linux group) talked a bit about the unification of our groups and it was decided that starting next month, all individual meetings will be scheduled to coincide on the same date/venue. April 11th will be the last un-unified Linux meeting of the year and I’m planning to have a live install of Ubuntu. Hope to have a good turn out.

The Northern NJ Open Source Alliance

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

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. I’m looking forward to our tentative first meeting this Monday, March 21st at the Panera Bread in Paramus. Any fellow geek enthusiast roaming around my page is welcome to join in.

Linux Meetup - March 14, 2005

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

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. One cool thing we managed to do in relatively little time was to perform a new install on someone’s laptop. The distro of choice was Ubuntu Warty and the entire process took less than 20 minutes. The only thing we didn’t manage to setup was the USB wireless adapter but that can be fixed once the laptop is plugged to a network and the appropriate drivers are installed. I only wish more people had attended the meeting to see this… One item we discussed was the possibility of combining our meetings with that of other Meetup groups from Northern NJ. It seems that the turn out for the Slashdot, MySQL, and PHP groups is not that great and we thought that by adding 1 or 2 people from each group to a common group would allow us to attract a bigger audience and boost the organizer’s motivation. The organizer for the Slashdot group told me nobody showed up for his last 2 meetings and he ended up sitting there all by himself. He’s very disappointed and understandably is considering droping the reins of the group. Hang in there buddy… I can completely relate to it… Well, now we have to get in touch with the other organizers and see if they want to join forces and form the new “Geek Alliance of New Jersey.”