What is the next meeting about?

Our group prides itself in being a "functional anarchy" -- which means the responsibility to find and secure a presenter for any given month falls to "everybody". Note that while technically this would only be "somebody", and in theory could actually be "anybody", often, in practice, it ends up being "nobody"...

Now, I realize this doesn't answer the question "what is the next topic?", but hopefully it provides insight as to why our answer is "we don't know"

That said, we do have a teensy amount of "organization" -- you'll note that our website is not a "wiki", in which anyone and everyone can come busting on in and spreading spam and/or fud, but rather a genuine "content management system" managed by our website provider and our webmaster (these are two different people...) Fortunately, we're also the same people who "moderate" the meetings, which means we're also the people that need to know about any upcoming presenters and their presentations. However, it does not mean that we will seek out someone to do a presentation!

This is where you come in: if you know of someone (perhaps even yourself) who is willing to give a presentation on just-about-any-topic (that is appropriate for a Linux user group), please be a NOBODY and tell us about it! Anarchy or not, we do have to make some order out of the chaos so we can schedule (and promote!) the meetings. When you find someone willing to give a presentation, contact the moderator or webmaster so we can schedule a date. We will then need a (short) e-mail from you with the following information:

  1. The presenter's name (and affiliation, if desired) as he or she wants to see it on our website
  2. A title and a short write-up (we only need a paragraph or two, but the more the merrier) Of course, I might re-write the title...
  3. Optional, but recommended: A "bio" of the presenter (with a thumbnail-sized pic, especially if they have never presented before, so we know who they are when they walk in the room)
  4. Important: contact information so that "someone" here can call and confirm a few days prior to the meeting that they will be able to make it (and/or that they remember that they were going to do a presentation...) Note: this will be kept confidential and will not be posted to the site (unless the presenter wants it posted -- please have them confirm this directly)

This information will be posted on our website about a month in advance of the meeting. It will also be posted to Meetup and possibly other publications. We encourage you to tell your friends, enemies, co-workers, and the like about it as well.

Originally written by Tom Emerson