Membership
Introducing the Provo Linux User Group (PLUG)
This is the first of many articles to come introducing our readers to the organizations associated with Utah Open Source. Today, we bring you one of the oldest Linux user groups in existence, let alone in Utah: the Provo Linux User Group (PLUG).
PLUG was first formed in 1994 by two then-students at BYU, Thayne Harbaugh and Mike Handy. Thayne and Mike had wanted to form an on-campus student organization for enthusiasts of Linux, but were unable to find a faculty member willing to sponsor its creation. Undaunted, they created PLUG as an off-campus organization.
This was during the early days of Linux and the Internet. The fact the plug.org domain name was available is one example of how early this was; The Intel Pentium CPU was brand new and most geeks were running 386 and 486 CPUs with less than 1GB of hard drive space; Internet service was still a novelty and most connections were made over serial modems at 9600 bps to 14.4Kbps.
The Linux community was young, still driven mostly by volunteers coordinating through online groups. However, 1994 would be the year Red Hat, SuSE, and Caldera would all release the first versions of their respective distributions, thus kicking off the fast-paced commercial Linux distribution race.
PLUG began holding its meetings the second Wednesday of every month — a tradition that has stood the test of time — at various venues around Utah Valley including the Canyon Park campus, The Palace, and at CEDO.
After the first five years of PLUG, the original founders were either moving out of the area, getting busy with work-related (Linux, of course) tasks, or just feeling it was time to pass the torch. Jason “Jayce^” Hall suddenly found himself holding said torch and carried PLUG through the next several exciting years until 2007 when Jason stepped aside to become more involved with UTOS and Ryan Simpkins took the helm.
Over the years PLUG has hosted several special engagements with impressive speakers such as John Terpstra and Steve French of the Samba project, Perl guru and O’Reilly author Damian Conway, and Miguel de Icaza of the Gnome project. Over the course of several Summers, PLUG has held annual barbecues for members and their families which also included surplus swap meets where members could trade or sell old hardware.
PLUG has a member mailing list which varies in the amount of traffic it gets. Most of the time, the list sees fairly low to moderate traffic, but occasionally will fill its members’ mailboxes with spurts of off-topic discussions. PLUG hosts archives of these highly intellectual discussions at http://plug.org/pipermail/plug.
The PLUG website is firmly located at http://www.plug.org/ and, as mentioned above, meets (with some very, very rare exceptions) the second Wednesday of each month at the Omniture building in the Canyon Park campus.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 15, 2008 in Community, Membership, UserGroups
Utah Open Source News - Community Growth
This month, we’ll begin our newsletter. UTOSF plans to send out this newsletter to all of the user group (UG) communities in Utah and surrounding areas. We post it here for your benefit and invite you to sign up for the News mailing list at http://utos.org/mailman/listinfo/ to receive this and other news.
In the future, UTOSF plans to make this a regular article released near the end of every month, so come by and see how we’re improving our community.
Utah Open Source Planet
The Utah Open Source Planet, run by Gabriel Gunderson can be accessed in another way, from Utah Open Source Foundation. Point your browser to http://planet.utos.org and receive the latest and greatest local Utah bloggers talking about everything from linux to food to programming to weight loss. These people are part of Utah Open Source and have a good nose for what’s going on in tech and open source in Utah. Please join us by participating in Utah Open Source Planet. Its a great blog community.
Streaming
UTOSF is proud to announce that we will provide streamed user group (UG) meetings. Utah Open Source Foundation (UTOSF) is spearheading an effort to get a streaming server up and running. We’ve taken into considerations things like bandwidth concerns, server power, usefulness of topic and much more. As such, we’ll be attempting to stream more and more meetings, events and other discussions this year for the UGs. The current plan is to cover most of the known user groups (UGs) by end of year 2008.
We need help from you to accomplish this. UTOSF is providing the hardware, bandwidth and configuration for anyone who’s willing to record their UG meeting. We want to find people who are regulars in each of the communities and help them set up the recording software. If you are interested, please contact clint@utos.org or jayce@utos.org for more information.
Conference Videos
We’re still learning here, so please bear with us. We’ve had a lot of requests regarding when the recordings of UTOSC 2007 will be released. I’d like to say that I have *actually* seen one and OpenSourceTV and KnowledgeBlue are doing a great job getting these together. I’m excited to see how the rest turn out. The videos will be released as we get them. There will be regular announcements on http://utosf.org so continue to watch for updates.
Multi-Distro Release Party
Only once in a great while will we see an event like this one. Only once will there be so many shiny new distributions to choose from. Only once will OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, OpenBSD and Fedora be released within one month of each other. Because of this The Utah Open Source Foundation is announcing the first and probably the only Multi-Distro Release Party in Utah. The release party will involve four major distros, plus anyone is welcome to bring their own distro to hand out.
The party will be held on Saturday, November 10, from 1-5pm at the Open Source Technology Center at Novell. We’ll have a few short presentations about the three released distributions, food and a large network install server for the Installfest. We hope to see you all there!
Where: Open Source Technology Center at Novell
Map: http://tinyurl.com/yprnqr
When: Saturday, November 10, 2007 1pm-5pm MST
What: Installfest, pizza, drinks and more.
You Can Help
I’d like to invite those interested in helping the Utah Open Source Conference 2008 to start attending the upcoming Conference planning meetings. Reply with the subject “Conference Planning” if you are interested in helping.
In addition, the Utah Open Source Foundation will begin regular “meets”. We’re planning on inviting leadership of each of the UGs, plus anyone interested in helping the community as a whole. UTOSF is dedicated to helping the groups by providing resources, tools and other benefits. Come and be a part of something great!
Cheers,
Clint Savage
Posted by Clint Savage on October 28, 2007 in Community, Conference, Events, Hearsay, Meetings, Membership, News, Recordings, Streaming, Videos
The end nears - only 2 days left until Utah Open Source Conference 2007
Register today.
Register today to get the discounted rate of $55 if you contact your SIG Leadership today!
For more information visit:
http://www.utosc.org
SCHEDULE
Come check out the schedule. Its being updated daily, many presentations are are available, more to come.
The schedule is available at http://www.utosc.org/schedule.
For more information visit:
http://www.utosc.org
SCHEDULE
Come check out the schedule. Its being updated daily, many presentations are are available, more to come.
The schedule is available at http://www.utosc.org/schedule.
Posted by Clint Savage on September 4, 2007 in Conference, Events, Membership, News, Registration
Convert your registration
Many of you have registered for the keynote only part of the Utah Open Source Conference. I’d like to offer to those of you interested in the rest of the conference to take the time this week and convert your registration.
Converting your registration is easy. Login to https://register.utosc.org/?Step=7 with the email address and confirmation code you were given. Update your information if you like and choose the option “Attend Full Conference”.
An email was recently sent informing you of this option and if you can find that email, you’ll also be able to determine how to get into the full conference for a measly $40 total. The price does jump to $55 at the end of this week, so register soon!
With over 30 presentations, opportunities for glorious swag and networking opportunities with others right here in Utah, why not sign up today. In fact, all proceeds from the conference go toward promoting open source in Utah and overall growth of the Utah Open Source communities at large.
If you haven’t already, sign up today: https://register.utosc.org. Get your discount codes from SIG leadership and get in for only $55. More information is available at our website, http://www.utosc.org.
See you all there.
Cheers,
Clint Savage
Founder, Utah Open Source Conference
Posted by Clint Savage on August 29, 2007 in Conference, Events, Keynotes, Membership, Registration
Utah Open Source Conference - Early bird registration ends this Saturday!
Utah Open Source Conference 2007 nears. Only two weeks left and we’re getting really excited!
Discounted registration is available through Saturday, August 25, 2007.
Register today to get the discounted rate of $199 (or $40 if you contact your SIG Leadership today!)
For more information visit:
http://www.utosc.org
SCHEDULE
Come check out the schedule. Its being updated daily, many presentations are are available, more to come.
The schedule is available at http://www.utosc.org/schedule.
Posted by Clint Savage on August 24, 2007 in Conference, Events, Membership, News, Registration
Birds of a Feather sessions at Utah Open Source Conference 2007
The idea of a BoF (Birds of a Feather) get together is to get people of like minds together.
Its time for you to suggest a BoF session for the Utah Open Source Conference 2007. Some simple ideas might be organizing user group recruiting (there will be a lot of prospects there), GPG key signing party, programming together, etc.
Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions are going to be run on Friday, September 6 and Saturday, September 7 at the end of the day.
Have a look around the community and think of something you think others might also like to discuss during the Utah Open Source Conference.
Send ideas to bofs@utos.org
Posted by Clint Savage on August 2, 2007 in Events, Meetings, Membership, News
Utah Open Source Awards - Honoring those who contribute to open source in Utah
Utah Open Source is a non-profit interested in the growth of open source and free software in our community. The Utah Open Source motto, ‘by, for and about Utah’, is focused on helping business and community members succeed while using free and open source technology.
Because of the great community we have, Utah Open Source wants to honor those in the open source community who’ve made a difference this year. Whether it be a community growth, development, business applications (or anything else you can think of). Submit them to us, we want to hear what the community thinks.
Submissions can be sent to: awards@utos.org
Utah Open Source is dedicated to improving the community. Recognizing excellence in our community is just one way that Utah Open Source is giving back.
Come and see the other ways Utah Open Source is giving back at the Utah Open Source Conference 2007. You can see if your vote helped propel someone to stardom in our community!
The award ceremony will be held on Thursday, September 6, 2007 between the keynotes by Matt Asay and Bruce Perens.
Posted by Clint Savage on August 1, 2007 in Events, Meetings, Membership, News
Utah Open Source Conference 2007 discounts
We’re so excited about the Utah Open Source Conference that we’re gonna extend a special deal to all attendees who register by August 25, 2007.
To get this tremendous discount, there is a small bit of work you must accomplish, but very simple. All you need to do is contact any of the community leadership in any of the Special Interest Groups (SIGs). Its quite easy to get a discount code and will remove over $100 off the Utah Open Source Conference 2007 price.
These discounts are limited so get yours, and register today.
Posted by Clint Savage on July 31, 2007 in Events, Membership, News
Bruce Perens Keynote - Utah Open Source Conference - Absolutely Free
It appears there might be a bit of confusion about the keynote at the beginning of the Utah Open Source Conference and we want to clear it up so you all can come.
First of all, the keynote is September 6, 2007, 7-9pm and all are invited to attend.
The keynote given by Bruce Perens is absolutely free to the first 100 people who register. In other words, there is no obligation to register for the full conference. This means you may come to the September 6, 2007 event without signing up for anything but the keynote.
You have more choice, more options and less obligations. Sure, we’d like you to come and visit the full conference on September 7 and September 8, and hope that you will. In fact, if you come to the free keynote and like what you see, we’d hope you will sign up that night.
There’s limited seating, however, which is why you’ve got to register for the keynote. Bruce has prepared an amazing presentation and Utah Open Source has a few surprises of their own in store. Come and enjoy a free night on Utah Open Source and learn about how Open Source can benefit your company, group, or yourself.
Its gonna be great night, and an even better weekend at the rest of the conference! We look forward to seeing you there.
Cheers,
Clint Savage
Founder - Utah Open Source Conference
Posted by Clint Savage on July 16, 2007 in Events, Membership, News