[PLUG] Annual Phila Tech Fun Weekend

["M.Simons" <msimons@slackware.com>]

Greetings,

   So the 3rd Annual Picnic/Bar Night/etc. weekend has come and gone.
This is the Weekend deemed PLUS (Philly Linux+Unix Symposium) which
runs around the birthday/Anniversary of the Linux Kernel on the 25th of
August.  Next year, we have a choice of appropriate weekend dates being
either Friday 20th-Sun 22nd or Friday 27th-Sun29th of August 2004 since
the 25th falls during the week.

   Ever since I got involved in PLUG at the Cyberloft, we have been
talking about having some sort of Linux Conference in Philadelphia, and
well, this is about as close as we have gotten so far.  :)

   Previous events have so far been the Picnic, bar nights, and a
computer/electronics swap meet.  Other events are certainly welcome and I
have always been interested in seeing Demo Days, Install Fests, BOFs,
classes/panels & discussions, geeks with guns outings, or whatever else
people want to throw together.  Previous correspondence has made it clear
to me that we could in effect throw together some seminars and demos
which might have a serious impact in influencing people in regional
government, nonprofits, etc.; however, unless people get involved this sort
of thing won't happen.

   This is great publicity for PLUG or any other computer/etc user group
or project you belong to.  (Feel free to pass on this invitiation to
participate, everyone F/L/OSS and geek/net/tech related is welcome.)
Last time Darxus ran stats, I believe these things were responsible for
two of the top ten referrers to the PLUG site.  We've also drawn people
from as many as seven states to these events!  Non-PLUS weekend events
such as the Redhat Roadtour whose Philadelphia date I helped coordinate
drew a SRO crowd of 90+ most of whom weren't normally a part of PLUG so
there's definitely a lot of potential in the area.

   As I'm needing to dedicate more and more time to the nonprofit
CARP/Please Take Materials Exchange, I would hope some of you might take
up the torch to promote and coordinate these events.  Hopefully through
the nonprofit, I might even be able to provide space for some of the
events next year! (If anybody wants to help get involved in
CARP/pleasetake.org feel free to drop me an email, but that is another
thing entirely -- we need help with a detailed web enabled database,
fundraising, and many other things!)

   I cannot go without saying great thanks this year to Paul at dpagin who
recreated the website from scratch.  We could have not done it this year
without his great help! Mucho kudos to him!  Last year the site was done
by darkspur (similar kudos).  [The current site for this past years events
can be seen at http://plus.phillylinux.org/ based on the original site at
http://philly.linux10.org which is slightly broken.]

   Please feel free to discuss on this or any other mailing list you get
this on, however if any any point you wish to take the discussion off
these lists, we have the old Yahoo groups email list at either the Yahoo
Groups list or a mailman list that Paul put together.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plus-talk or the mailman list
http://plus.phillylinux.org/mailmain/listinfo/

Of course you can always email me, but as I said, I need to focus more on
the nonprofit.

Thanks
-- 
msimons@slackware.com INFORMATION*MEDIA*PHOTOGRAPHY msimonsmail@yahoo.com
Creative Arts Resource Project : PTMaterials Exchange : www.pleasetake.org
A 501(c)3 Non-profit Organization Arts and Environmental Resource Network
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