[lug] Re: Coding night questions

[Chris Riddoch]

Thanks for the info, Sean. As you suggest, I'm posting this reply to
BLUG as well. This is much more detailed than I'd expected, and it
sounds like a lot of fun to me!

I'll see about getting ECCR 105 reserved for most Thursday evenings I
can, for the semester.  And I'll bring my laptop. We can probably plug
a CD player (or laptop - someone else's. Audio on my laptop is hosed,
for some reason) into the speakers in the room and see how they do.

Is anyone else interested?

Sean Reifschneider <jafo at tummy.com> writes:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2002 at 09:13:11PM -0700, Chris Riddoch wrote:
> >Purpose of the questions: I'd like to set up coding nights at CU, and
> >would like to get suggestions on how to go about running such a beast.
> 
> Here's a quick run-down of what we have going up here.
> 
> Our local LUG meetings are on the first Tuesday of every month.  The
> remaining three-ish Tuesdays we have the Hacking Society meetings.  A local
> business has generously offered their conference room, including 802.11b
> wireless access to the public net, for us to meet in.  The first 3 meetings
> we held at our house.  We run our meetings from 8pm to 11pm on those
> nights.
> 
> The goal of the Hacking Society is to foster geek community-building
> through the shared experience of hacking.  Of course, by "hacking", I mean
> the historic meaning of working on interesting projects, not the "script
> kiddies trying to compromise boxes" meaning which has become what most
> people think of in relation to the term.
> 
> The way that we determine what projects to work on is simple: you work on
> whatever project you want to work on...  To get an idea of what has been
> worked on in the past, see the Meeting Minutes on the hackingsociety.com
> web-site under the "NCLUG" chapter (currently the only one).  So far, there
> really hasn't been a problem with people keeping busy on their projects.
> 
> My general feeling on it is that if you don't have something to do, you
> should ask around.  I'd prefer it not be the other way around -- bringing
> projects and asking around for people to help you on them.  It's meant to
> be a place where you can come and work on things rather than a place to
> come to have somone do something for you (like you would have at an
> install-fest).
> 
> It's meant to be a sacred place full of positive hacking energy, if you
> will.  Hacking by osmosis -- where your progress helps drive others
> progress, and so on...
> 
> Of course, those are just the things that seem to work for us so far.  You
> may or may not find that another structure works better in your
> environment.
> 
> We have had some "group projects", but none of them were really planned.
> For example, at the first one, a group of three were working on a new
> release of the HP-PA Debian distribution.  At a few others, two of us have
> worked on getting the local LUG web-site checked into CVS.  I continue to
> work on trying to get the hackingsociety.org web-site up to speed as well
> as other projects...
> 
> Evelyn has suggested the idea of organizing a "Knuth Study Group", but that
> has not yet happened.  I would think that a meeting at the University would
> be relatively easy to put together such a study group or other group
> activity.  Perhaps, take some of those "programming contests" and each week
> everyone works on one of the problems and then discusses the answers they
> came up with.
> 
> >What are some trial-and-error things you've run into that I should try
> >to keep in mind and avoid?
> 
> My biggest concern is about people who want to bring a machine and have one
> of the other folks install a distro or otherwise do significant work.
> There's nothing wrong with it, but that's more what the LUG install-fests
> are for.  In general, it's gone extremely smoothly.
> 
> You are welcome to use the "hacking society" name, in starting a Boulder
> chapter.  I would be happy to set you up an area on that site for your
> meetings.  I know there has been some interest in this from folks in
> Boulder, and would expect even more interest if you were to post this
> discussion on the LUG mailing lists, for example.  In fact, I'd highly
> recommend you post this thread there, and/or on the hackingsociety mailing
> list (http://lists.hackingsociety.com/mailman/listinfo/hackingsociety/).
> 
> If you are looking for a group project, I have some ideas for what I think
> the Hacking Society web-site should offer...  ;-)
> 
> In general, I've found organizing the hacking society meetings to be
> extremely easy...  The hardest part being locating meeting space.  For us,
> we have 6 or so folks who show up regularly and 802.11b wireless was
> *ESSENTIAL* to us.  In a University setting where you could possibly hold
> it in any number of public meeting spaces including common rooms, class
> rooms, and library space (though we find some music helps), it should be
> fairly easier.
> 
> Now that we have a regular location, managing the meeting is really as
> simple as sending out an announcement and showing up...
> 
> Based on what I've heard, it sounds like if you wanted a Boulder chapter of
> the Hacking Society to start up, you may not even have to run it...  There
> has definitely been some interest expressed, though organizing it is the
> best way to make sure that it happens at the University instead of
> Interlocken, for example.  ;-)
> 
> Good luck,
> Sean
> -- 
>  Gone Postal Sort: Iterate over elements, any element that is out of order you
>  blow away.  -- Evelyn, Kevin, and Sean, watching Monty Python and reading DDJ
> Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
> tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python
> 

-- 
Chris Riddoch       | epistemological
socket at peakpeak.com | humility