talks at meetings [was: report on last meeting]

[Lionel Elie Mamane <lionel@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 03:09:28PM +0100, Jama Poulsen wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:20:58PM +0100, Joost van Baal wrote:

>> About 13 people attended the meeting, which lasted from 20:00 to 03:00.
>> Henk Kuijpers gave an excellent presentation about the introduction of
>> Open Source and GNU/Linux at the Rabobank.  (Thanks to Kees
>> Stravers

> Yes, thanks for the Rabo presentation and the SCE beamer!  The
> presentation really sparked some interesting and funny dialogs.

My voice in, and all that.

> Perhaps next time we should allow people to request a presentation
> type?  Something they would like to know more about. After people
> cast their vote on a topic, some people could prepare for a small
> presentation and help guide the discussion.

Hmm... Volunteering?

Anyway, I think starting the meeting with a presentation is a good
idea. I certainly won't want it to become the major part of the
meeting [1]. The "free for all", "many subgroups doing whatever is
cool in the moment" is, IMHO, what makes the uniqueness of Enosig
meetings. Maybe I'm just being paranoid in fearing such a drifting.

[1] Yes, I know mine turned out to be like the whole meeting. But you
    all seemed so interested ;)

>   - Wireless networking with Debian

Can show the basics.

>   - OpenLDAP directory management and applications

Would actually like something like this, in the direction of having a
shared address book, plus personal, per-user address books, for a
company.

>   - Postfix, Courier/Cyrus installation and configuration

Exim! Exim!

>   - using the GNU autotools (automake, autoconf, libtools, etc.)
>     for your projects

I'm client for this one. Joost?

>   - writing SOAP services with Perl/Python/...

Bouh! SOAP sucks.


Some of these seem to me like they fit the "workshop" model better
than the talk: People bring hardware and actually do the stuff under
supervision of the "speaker". From the experience of my Functional
Programming Workshop, I feel for such specialised workshops, it would
be a good idea to separate the room in two: A place for workshop
participants, and a place for people doing something else.