What do we know about WLUG's history? If it really is one of the oldest
LUGs, it might merit a Wikipedia article. It would be great if we could
flesh that out, too.
This article seems like it could use a list of LUGs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_user_group
On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 1:43 PM Dennis Payne via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org>
wrote:
> The NatickFOSS group uses gettogether.community instead of meetup.com. I
> don't know that it has gotten us any visibility but the software is open
> source. I've been tempted to join meetup to go to Boston Indie Game
> Developer meetings but have so far held off.
>
> The NatickFOSS group also gets a booth at the Science on State Street
> event at Framingham State. It is a free STEM activity fair for kids. My job
> at the event is to generally occupy the time of the kids so the other
> members talk to the parents. First year I had a playstation controller
> hooked up to my laptop and held it out to any kid that walked by. Last year
> I brought the arcade machine assembled by my son's cub scout den. Any idea
> if WPI does any thing similar? Even if it is something only for WPI
> students it might be useful to alert people to the group's existence.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Dennis Payne
> dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com
> https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/dulsi
> _______________________________________________
> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
>
The NatickFOSS group uses gettogether.community instead of meetup.com.
I don't know that it has gotten us any visibility but the software is
open source. I've been tempted to join meetup to go to Boston Indie
Game Developer meetings but have so far held off.
The NatickFOSS group also gets a booth at the Science on State Street
event at Framingham State. It is a free STEM activity fair for kids. My
job at the event is to generally occupy the time of the kids so the
other members talk to the parents. First year I had a playstation
controller hooked up to my laptop and held it out to any kid that
walked by. Last year I brought the arcade machine assembled by my son's
cub scout den. Any idea if WPI does any thing similar? Even if it is
something only for WPI students it might be useful to alert people to
the group's existence.
--
Dennis Payne
dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com
https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/dulsi
Ideas are great, but I don't think we have a lack of ideas. We need people to step up and implement ideas. What concrete steps do you propose? Who do you propose should do those steps?
On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 10:43:30AM -0500, Joshua Stone via WLUG wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I thought I'd like to continue the topic about what we could do to increase
> attendance meeting.
>
> I think working with the community at WPI would be a great thing for us, so
> long as we try to understand more about the student culture. I've learned
> that one of the most important things about WPI is that a sense of
> community and working toward a greater goal are included as part of the
> curriculum. One of the earliest classes a WPI student takes involves
> thinking about the biggest problems impacting the world and makes strides
> to tackling such problems head-on.
>
> https://www.wpi.edu/project-based-learning/wpi-plan/10-things-to-know
>
> I believe WPI also has a strong background in bioinformatics, and that's a
> field that can surely benefit from FOSS as we want to encourage openness
> and ethics when being on the forefront of scientific research that could
> have sweeping societal impact. The last thing we need is more companies
> like 23andMe hoarding genetic data for profit.
>
> Perhaps WLUG can do more to be involved in such things, emphasizing the
> importance of "ethical" computing with the problems of DRM,
> spying/tracking, proprietary software and data formats, software patents,
> and licenses that lock away data that the community could benefit from.
> Essentially we could give people more of an opportunity to think about the
> social aspects and ramifications of technology, and can use that as a
> framework for creating a better future.
>
> These are still ideas I'm throwing at the wall, hopefully something sticks!
>
> -Josh
Hey all,
I thought I'd like to continue the topic about what we could do to increase
attendance meeting.
I think working with the community at WPI would be a great thing for us, so
long as we try to understand more about the student culture. I've learned
that one of the most important things about WPI is that a sense of
community and working toward a greater goal are included as part of the
curriculum. One of the earliest classes a WPI student takes involves
thinking about the biggest problems impacting the world and makes strides
to tackling such problems head-on.
https://www.wpi.edu/project-based-learning/wpi-plan/10-things-to-know
I believe WPI also has a strong background in bioinformatics, and that's a
field that can surely benefit from FOSS as we want to encourage openness
and ethics when being on the forefront of scientific research that could
have sweeping societal impact. The last thing we need is more companies
like 23andMe hoarding genetic data for profit.
Perhaps WLUG can do more to be involved in such things, emphasizing the
importance of "ethical" computing with the problems of DRM,
spying/tracking, proprietary software and data formats, software patents,
and licenses that lock away data that the community could benefit from.
Essentially we could give people more of an opportunity to think about the
social aspects and ramifications of technology, and can use that as a
framework for creating a better future.
These are still ideas I'm throwing at the wall, hopefully something sticks!
-Josh
Tim,
Thank you very much for creating a meetup.com group for us! The UX for
finding future meetups and adding meetup dates to a calender is quite
good. Finding WLUG should also be fairly easy now when searching for
"linux" within a 50 mile radius of Boston:
https://www.meetup.com/find/?allMeetups=false&keywords=linux&radius=50&user…
I've noticed that some search strings will show LUGs with overlapping
interests but not WLUG. I think adding more words like "FOSS",
"Android", "Libre", "Open Source", "Ubuntu", "Fedora", "OpenSUSE",
"Arch Linux", "Unix", etc, to the related topics and/or What We're
About section should improve this.
I've tried setting up a community over Slack but I think the steps need
to join was what made it too intrusive for new people -- take joining
the Rust language Slack server for example:
https://rust-slack.herokuapp.com/
- Send an invite link to your email- Register with a name and password-
Be greeted with prompts about whether to send notifications- Open the
#general channel
And this has to be repeated for joining every community that has their
own Slack server, or at least this has been my experience so far. I
think Slack has cemented itself as more of a means for teams to
collaborate on a project, not so much for casual users who want to jump
right into a new chat.
Matrix only needs to register a username and password (email is
optional) on the server you're on, and once that's done you can join
any number of channels on that server. This is much closer to the UX of
IRC, and it's still superior in some ways because there's no fiddling
with choosing a specific authentication method like SASL and/or
authenticating with nickserv
I think in general Matrix has more mindshare amongst Linux users as a
modern alternative to IRC, which I think is worth considering when
comparing frequency of posts on Reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/search?q=matrix&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevanc…
-Josh
On Sat, 2020-01-11 at 22:59 -0500, Tim Keller via WLUG wrote:
> This morning I went out and created a meetup group for WLUG:
> https://www.meetup.com/Worcester-Linux-Users-Group and paid for six
> months. Feel free to go and join up if you'd like.
> The matrix stuff is cool, I cut my teeth on IRC so I'm always partial
> to the old school but I also understand that eventually we'll want a
> slack channel as well maybe.
>
> Tim.
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 4:07 PM Anderson, Charles R via WLUG <
> wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote:
> > We also have an IRC channel:
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.wlug.org/participate.html
> >
> >
> >
> > Internet Relay Chat
> >
> >
> >
> > Join the realtime chat on our IRC channel.
> >
> >
> >
> > Connect your IRC client to irc.freenode.net
> >
> > Join the #wlug-ma channel or join directly from this link:
> > irc://irc.freenode.net/#wlug-ma.
> >
> > See more information about Freenode and join the chat from your
> > web browser
> >
> >
> >
> > but maybe IRC is too old school--no one chats on it anymore.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 04:03:14PM -0500, Joshua Stone via WLUG
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hey all,
> >
> > >
> >
> > > Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again
> > to
> >
> > > Tim for giving me a ride home!
> >
> > >
> >
> > > Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve
> > general
> >
> > > activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts.
> > Hosting a
> >
> > > meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and
> >
> > > getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great
> > too.
> >
> > >
> >
> > > I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a
> > text chat
> >
> > > format for users who want to communicate more easily over the
> > internet,
> >
> > > especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord
> >
> > > servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room
> > sizes
> >
> > > generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even
> > before
> >
> > > Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates,
> > etc.
> >
> > >
> >
> > > Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve
> >
> > > participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here
> > because it
> >
> > > has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience:
> >
> > >
> >
> > > - Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web (
> >
> > > https://matrix.org/clients/
> >
> > > - Persistent chat history
> >
> > > - Link previews
> >
> > > - Various bots to choose from for adding functionality (
> >
> > > https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/
> >
> > > - User moderation
> >
> > > - Server federation
> >
> > > - Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely
> > FOSS
> >
> > > - File sharing
> >
> > > - Voice/video calls
> >
> > >
> >
> > >
> >
> > > I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat
> > room
> >
> > > would look like:
> >
> > >
> >
> > > https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png
> >
> > >
> >
> > > Or you can join the room I made:
> >
> > >
> >
> > > https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
> >
> > >
> >
> > > Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already:
> >
> > >
> >
> > > #wlug:matrix.org
> >
> > >
> >
> > >
> >
> > >
> >
> > > Any thoughts?
> >
> > >
> >
> > >
> >
> > > -Josh
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org
> >
> > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________WLUG mailing list --
> wlug(a)lists.wlug.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
This morning I went out and created a meetup group for WLUG:
https://www.meetup.com/Worcester-Linux-Users-Group and paid for six months.
Feel free to go and join up if you'd like.
The matrix stuff is cool, I cut my teeth on IRC so I'm always partial to
the old school but I also understand that eventually we'll want a slack
channel as well maybe.
Tim.
On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 4:07 PM Anderson, Charles R via WLUG <
wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote:
> We also have an IRC channel:
>
> http://www.wlug.org/participate.html
>
> Internet Relay Chat
>
> Join the realtime chat on our IRC channel.
>
> Connect your IRC client to irc.freenode.net
> Join the #wlug-ma channel or join directly from this link: irc://
> irc.freenode.net/#wlug-ma.
> See more information about Freenode and join the chat from your web
> browser
>
> but maybe IRC is too old school--no one chats on it anymore.
>
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 04:03:14PM -0500, Joshua Stone via WLUG wrote:
> > Hey all,
> >
> > Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again to
> > Tim for giving me a ride home!
> >
> > Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve general
> > activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts. Hosting a
> > meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and
> > getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great too.
> >
> > I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a text chat
> > format for users who want to communicate more easily over the internet,
> > especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord
> > servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room sizes
> > generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even before
> > Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates, etc.
> >
> > Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve
> > participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here because it
> > has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience:
> >
> > - Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web (
> > https://matrix.org/clients/
> > - Persistent chat history
> > - Link previews
> > - Various bots to choose from for adding functionality (
> > https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/
> > - User moderation
> > - Server federation
> > - Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely FOSS
> > - File sharing
> > - Voice/video calls
> >
> >
> > I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat room
> > would look like:
> >
> > https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png
> >
> > Or you can join the room I made:
> >
> > https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
> >
> > Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already:
> >
> > #wlug:matrix.org
> >
> >
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> >
> > -Josh
> _______________________________________________
> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
>
--
I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their
constituents as "consumers".
I use IRC from time to time on other channels, averaging about once a
week. I peer into the WLUG channel from time to time. I will make
"noise" in the future when there.
On 1/10/20 4:07 PM, Anderson, Charles R via WLUG wrote:
> We also have an IRC channel:
>
> http://www.wlug.org/participate.html
>
> Internet Relay Chat
>
> Join the realtime chat on our IRC channel.
>
> Connect your IRC client to irc.freenode.net
> Join the #wlug-ma channel or join directly from this link: irc://irc.freenode.net/#wlug-ma.
> See more information about Freenode and join the chat from your web browser
>
> but maybe IRC is too old school--no one chats on it anymore.
>
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 04:03:14PM -0500, Joshua Stone via WLUG wrote:
>> Hey all,
>>
>> Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again to
>> Tim for giving me a ride home!
>>
>> Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve general
>> activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts. Hosting a
>> meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and
>> getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great too.
>>
>> I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a text chat
>> format for users who want to communicate more easily over the internet,
>> especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord
>> servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room sizes
>> generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even before
>> Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates, etc.
>>
>> Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve
>> participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here because it
>> has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience:
>>
>> - Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web (
>> https://matrix.org/clients/
>> - Persistent chat history
>> - Link previews
>> - Various bots to choose from for adding functionality (
>> https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/
>> - User moderation
>> - Server federation
>> - Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely FOSS
>> - File sharing
>> - Voice/video calls
>>
>>
>> I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat room
>> would look like:
>>
>> https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png
>>
>> Or you can join the room I made:
>>
>> https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
>>
>> Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already:
>>
>> #wlug:matrix.org
>>
>>
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>>
>>
>> -Josh
> _______________________________________________
> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
I think IRC would've been a great choice about a decade ago, but it
seems to have fallen out of favor as newer chat services have been
added. It's less that IRC is old per se, rather virtually nothing has
been done to improve the UX. IRC has some very unique problems where
you have to actively configure something as simple as the port number
to connect with and whether to enable TLS while other services have
standardized on this long ago so users don't have to think about that.
I remember when IRC was very popular among the communities I frequented
years ago, but outside of FOSS projects many of these channels are now
dead because people have moved onto Discord, Matrix, Telegram, etc. I
think part of this can also be attributed to the advent of mobile, as
IRC clients are usually painful on a phone where you have to type
commands on a touchscreen. I also have found IRC to be blocked on some
networks, while Matrix served over HTTPS is very firewall-friendly.
As of 2020, there are still many features that're missing because IRC
essentially pushes implementation onto the client and/or need a bouncer
to get features you'd get for free in other services. You practically
need a personal cloud if you want to be able to have persistent chat
history and/or avoid flooding a channel with disconnect messages
especially if you're on a mobile device that can't maintain an active
connection at all times. You also need a bot if you want any kind of
features like link previews.
-Josh
On Fri, 2020-01-10 at 21:07 +0000, Anderson, Charles R via WLUG wrote:
> We also have an IRC channel:
>
> http://www.wlug.org/participate.html
>
> Internet Relay Chat
>
> Join the realtime chat on our IRC channel.
>
> Connect your IRC client to irc.freenode.net
> Join the #wlug-ma channel or join directly from this link:
> irc://irc.freenode.net/#wlug-ma.
> See more information about Freenode and join the chat from your
> web browser
>
> but maybe IRC is too old school--no one chats on it anymore.
>
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 04:03:14PM -0500, Joshua Stone via WLUG
> wrote:
> > Hey all,
> >
> > Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again
> > to
> > Tim for giving me a ride home!
> >
> > Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve
> > general
> > activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts.
> > Hosting a
> > meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and
> > getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great
> > too.
> >
> > I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a text
> > chat
> > format for users who want to communicate more easily over the
> > internet,
> > especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord
> > servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room sizes
> > generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even before
> > Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates, etc.
> >
> > Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve
> > participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here because
> > it
> > has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience:
> >
> > - Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web (
> > https://matrix.org/clients/
> > - Persistent chat history
> > - Link previews
> > - Various bots to choose from for adding functionality (
> > https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/
> > - User moderation
> > - Server federation
> > - Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely
> > FOSS
> > - File sharing
> > - Voice/video calls
> >
> >
> > I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat room
> > would look like:
> >
> > https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png
> >
> > Or you can join the room I made:
> >
> > https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
> >
> > Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already:
> >
> > #wlug:matrix.org
> >
> >
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> >
> > -Josh
> _______________________________________________
> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org
We also have an IRC channel:
http://www.wlug.org/participate.html
Internet Relay Chat
Join the realtime chat on our IRC channel.
Connect your IRC client to irc.freenode.net
Join the #wlug-ma channel or join directly from this link: irc://irc.freenode.net/#wlug-ma.
See more information about Freenode and join the chat from your web browser
but maybe IRC is too old school--no one chats on it anymore.
On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 04:03:14PM -0500, Joshua Stone via WLUG wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again to
> Tim for giving me a ride home!
>
> Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve general
> activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts. Hosting a
> meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and
> getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great too.
>
> I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a text chat
> format for users who want to communicate more easily over the internet,
> especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord
> servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room sizes
> generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even before
> Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates, etc.
>
> Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve
> participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here because it
> has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience:
>
> - Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web (
> https://matrix.org/clients/
> - Persistent chat history
> - Link previews
> - Various bots to choose from for adding functionality (
> https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/
> - User moderation
> - Server federation
> - Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely FOSS
> - File sharing
> - Voice/video calls
>
>
> I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat room
> would look like:
>
> https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png
>
> Or you can join the room I made:
>
> https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
>
> Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already:
>
> #wlug:matrix.org
>
>
>
> Any thoughts?
>
>
> -Josh
Hey all,
Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again to
Tim for giving me a ride home!
Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve general
activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts. Hosting a
meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and
getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great too.
I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a text chat
format for users who want to communicate more easily over the internet,
especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord
servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room sizes
generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even before
Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates, etc.
Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve
participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here because it
has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience:
- Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web (
https://matrix.org/clients/)
- Persistent chat history
- Link previews
- Various bots to choose from for adding functionality (
https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/)
- User moderation
- Server federation
- Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely FOSS
- File sharing
- Voice/video calls
I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat room
would look like:
https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png
Or you can join the room I made:
https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already:
#wlug:matrix.org
Any thoughts?
-Josh
