A few Announcements and Comments

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

One of the things that I do as Chariman of KLUG is to periodically make an 
annoncements about how KLUG is changing and growing, and to share a few 
impressions with you about our direction, and the projects we're currently
working on.

First of all, I'd like to point out that our web site and ALL MESSAGES sent
through our mailing list are now EASILY searched, though search engine that
has been installed on the KLUG server. With something like 5,000 messages (my
guess, if someone has a better nunber, please correct me) sent through our 
mailing list in the last 16 months, we have accumulated a large store of good
answers out there, and its now avilable for everyone to search.

Thanks go out to John Beimler for doing a lot of the work on this, identifying
the right search software, and seeing this project through. Also, Bruce Smith
(or vice-chair and sitemaster) for helping with configuring and installation
of a running search engine that we can all use. 

Early on, John rightly pointed out that it ran against the spirit of the Open 
Source idea to reserve the mailing list archive only to those in the extended
membership benefit program. In order to maintain the value of that program,
we will be building up a library of some of the best and latest books, and
perhaps other materials on Linux, for EMB participants to borrow. You have
all seen the inventory of what we own, circulated by Adam, so you know that 
there are other items we would want to sell or loan out. We shall be building
on this as we go forward; your suggestions (also to Adam) are welcome.

On our video outreach project, my thanks go out to Wesley Leonard and Brenda 
Smith, who have been driving this project forward with help from several others
in KLUG (such as Matt Crampton), and people from the local acting and video 
community. I hear we have some of the production "in the can" now, with a com-
pleted script and more to come, we look forward to completion of our first 
video production sometime later this summer or in the early Fall.

We are changing the way we handle our beginners' meetings, in a couple of ways.
Since we see that knowing more about machines that people bring with them is 
helpful, we've installed a questionairre on our web site, at:
http://klug.armintl.com/meetings/installform.html
and you really really oughtta fill this out BEFORE you come to the beginners' 
meeting, perhaps a WEEK before, aat least. That we, our installers can look at
the information, decide in advance if there will any difficulties or unusual 
situations, and take things from there.

Also, we want to start a beginners orientation about 1/2 hour BEFORE the 
meeting time, so we can cover some general topics with you about Linux,
perhaps how it differs from other operating system we hear are in use out
there, and perhaps answering some of your questions in the process. After
the install, we're going to try more focus on how you can USE your new Linux
system, so you don't leave the meeting in a state of confusion about what to
do next.

Finally, but not least, we welcome Matt Crampton as the new Webmaster of our 
current Web site. Matt has done a good job on the new Boogies web site, and
now he's looking after ours. Welcome aboard, Matt!

That's about all for this week. I'm going to be away for this week, but I'll
be checking email periodically. I want to encourage each of you to help us 
as we grow and move Linux into a more visible position in our community. You
don't need to be a kernel hacker to help out... so please volunteer! Next week,
I'll be back, and I'll write about some of our "unsung heroes", who have been
doing work behind (or almost behind) the scenes.

                                                      Regards,
                                                         ---> RGB <---