This is an old revision of the document!
BALUG todo list
Steering Committee
Noon,
October 1st,
Conference Call
Agenda
The Big Plan
BALUG in general
sponsorships/funding/budgets/policies, etc.
general direction, plans, and vision for BALUG?
BALUG Web & Email Issues
beta.balug.org - where, objectives, participants, etc.
longer term Internet plans (redundancy, fail-over, RSVP system, etc.)
Website
Do we have access/own all of the resources that we need?
Can we move forward without the old broke mysql stuff?
Anyone opposed to a hosted wysiwyg solution like sitekreator.com?
How can we implement an RSVP system for events?
simple e-mail alias? (That's what BALUG had historically)
snazzier web form, with reminder option(s), etc.?
we probably want to avoid some 3rd party system that folks may not particularly trust and/or that may have terms some or many may find objectionable (e.g. many folks don't want their e-mail addresses made available to yet another 3rd party site that may end up leading to spam or unwanted promotional e-mails, etc.)
we probably need to consistently "push" folks towards RSVP to get RSVP responses that would be reasonabe indicators of probable attendance. E.g. if the event is promoted and publicized in inconsistent ways (not necessarily a bad thing itself), but when it's promoted, if there's nothing that implies folks need to RSVP, or they need to refer to our web site (where it would tell them they need to RSVP), then they typically wouldn't RSVP - and as publicity coverage (and response) may vary, we may be left with litle clue as to how many folks to actually expect.
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Speaker Coordination
What is our goal… driving meeting attendance or supporting local causes?
How to ensure that we don't double book speaking slots?
Update
BALUG Speaker Coordination (note that that page may eventually move - but for the time being, that's where it is) - that's what it's there for. If one doesn't put information there that a speaker is booked/confirmed (or even tentative) for a date, then folks will presume the date is open. Folks aren't going to remember that e-mail from N days/weeks/months ago - especially if they weren't on
balug-speaker-coordinators@balug.org at the time (and having a bunch 'o individuals trying independently to track the status would be rather redundant with what the wiki page is intended to do; also if folks separately maintain their own copies of such status, when they have conflicting information, how would one determine which information is correct? … with the wiki page it's out there for all to see (and even the revision history of who made what changes and when)).
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Best Practices Guide for Speakers
did a quite good page of that before; it's still to be extracted from the old BALUG wiki stuff (and no, I don't feel like writing up all that work again, but if someone else wants to, feel free; we can always reintegrate useful bits from the older materials into a newer writeup once we've retrieved the older materials)
Event Logistics
Update from Mae Ling on the Four Seas
Menu Changes
Number of dishes won't change
Variety will change & rotate monthly between 4 entrees from the beef, pork, chicken & veggie menu items
Menu will rotate monthly between noodles & rice, both of which will be veggie
50+ people, we can eat upstairs (how to forecast this?)
No more Musical Chairs
Feb. 2008 - 2008-02-19 - any conflicts between date, venue, and Chinese New Year?
Name tags?
Address bottlenecks:
Sitting down for dinner promptly
Selling dinner tickets
Late comers
Musical Chairs & non-eaters
Dinner to speaker transition
Door Prizes
How can we improve the AV equipment?
Portable Projector (Can borrow from Untangle, Speaker is bringing his own for October)
Portable Screen (About $300)
Time for community announcements, how to keep them concise & on topic?
Publicizing the next event
Finances
Mailing Lists
Additional Issues & general todo
* Get (more) detailed information (text blurbs, etc.) for upcoming confirmed speaker engagements
update website with the above
continue to tweak and improve our dining experience and coordination (cat herding and menu improvements, avoiding musical chair syndrome, etc.)
continue to line up speaker(s)/presentation(s) more future meetings
In general, increasing moves to a more "production" infrastructure (reliable and redundant web, lists and e-mail) (probably don't need super-high availability, but being able to fail over or recover to alternate system in relatively quick order (minutes to hours, rather than days to weeks) would be a very good thing)
Migration off of DreamHost.com - including salvaging all that's feasible and of significant interest to BALUG, and smooth migration
(including:
control of and (eventual) migration of
DNS (
Michael Paoli: e-mailed domain registrant on 2007-09-08 & 2007-09-30
Michael Paoli: left phone message(s) and e-mailed again on 2007-10-10
Mae Ling Mak: e-mailed domain registrant 2007-10-14
need to follow-up as necessary to gain control of registrant and
DNS delegation information … without being excessively pesky about it)
lists and list archives (including passwords, names, preferences, etc.)
lots of wiki pages that were functional there
presenter information, presentation/slides and such, and links to such,
meeting writeups/minutes of past several years
past approximately 3 years of BALUG history
(most) all the
HTML page stuff
information for speakers
speaker coordination resources
spiffier information on directions to the meeting location
other useful resources and pages of information
etc.
)
get regular off-site automated backups in place (covering absolutely everything BALUG has hosted on DreamHost.com., if feasible - e.g. including stuff that DreamHost.com only allows access to via MySQL client)
new landing places for stuff moved/extracted off of DreamHost.com
beta.balug.org. - where should that be? (at least thus far and temporarily, it's on the sf-lug.com. box … but it could be almost anywhere)
sf-lug.com. box (and the major migration/upgrade of that to a new box!)
BALUG has an IP (208.96.15.254) for its use on that box
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Mailman (list software) is installed on sf-lug.com. box, but isn't configured yet
BALUG needs to create its own e-mail infrastructure off of 208.96.15.254 (not yet in place, other than the sf-lug.com. box has been reconfigured so it's not using 208.96.15.254 for SF-LUG / default e-mail on the sf-lug.com. box). Note also that BALUG is also (at least thus far) using some of the SF-LUG.com e-mail infrastructure (most notably a bunch of forwarding aliases).
wiki - sf-lug.com. has a wiki configured for it (and BALUG is using some of that) … but don't yet have such configured separately for BALUG (under it's own IP address and
DNS names and such) - so, the BALUG stuff that's there so far may not be at all in it's "permanent" location.
DreamHost.com content extraction
DNS phased migration off of DreamHost.com
have created new.balug.org. and beta.balug.org. (including slave(s))
start phased change of balug.org. (get registrar control, add NS records for balug.org.)
add slaves for balug.org. (have queued up good volunteer slave resources once we can allow them to do zone transfers)
continue to maintain balug.org. zone in mode compatible with DreamHost.com until fully migrated off of DreamHost.com (work in progress - currently being done with (to be new) primary master on ns1.balug.org.)
This list originally based upon some earlier partial lists / status reports, e.g.:
Any good words as to the gathering of data from the old balug website ?
http://www.balug.org/ updated! :-) (& related information)