All Acadiana residents with an interest in open source technologies are invited to attend the July 2008 meeting of the Acadiana Open Source Group on Thursday, July 31 at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will be held in conference room 101 of the Advanced Computer Technology and Research building on UL campus thanks to arrangements made by faculty of the Computer Science Department for us to use their facilities. Attendees may park in Zone 13. See this map for locations of both areas.
Blake Deville will be presenting on the OpenSolaris operating system and its use on the Sun xVM VirtualBox virtualization platform. This presentation will include how to obtain and install OpenSolaris and major differences between it and other operating systems. Those who attended the last meeting can look forward to learning more about individual desktop users' applications for virtualization. Please remember to help to spread the word about the meeting to family, friends, classmates, and colleagues!
Thanks to all who attended the June 2008 meeting of the Acadiana Open Source Group. The presentation given by Bryan Fusilier on virtualization with Xen was very well-received. Thanks to Abacus Data Exchange and the Travis Technology Center for their hospitality in hosting the meeting and providing a tour of their facilities after the presentation. Slides should be posted to the web site shortly.
Announcements:
- Congratulations to the Firefox development team for receiving over eight million downloads of Firefox 3 within the first 24 hours of its release. You can continue to spread the word about Firefox via the Spread Firefox campaign web site.
- Please contact Matthew Turland if you would like to suggest a topic or volunteer to speak at future meetings or if you'd be interested in sponsoring refreshments or door prizes.
- Frank Ducrest is planning a workshop on the Alice programming language to take place on Saturday July 12 from 10 AM to 12 PM in room 106 of the Advanced Computer Technology and Research building on UL campus. Please contact Frank to sign up.
- A few pontential projects have been suggested for AOS to increase open source awareness, particularly in the educational system, with the help of the Capital Area Corporate Recycling Council. If you think you'd be interested in contributing old computer components, organizing reception of contributions, or instructing teachers and students in the installation and use of OSS, contact Joe Abraham.
- For PHP developers, the annual Zend PHP Conference and Expo is coming up in September. It will take place in the convention center in Santa Clara, CA and its session schedule will include a presentation by one of our members, Matthew Turland.
All Acadiana residents with an interest in open source technologies are invited to attend the June 2008 meeting of the Acadiana Open Source Group on Thursday, June 26 at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Travis Technology Center at 110 Travis Street in the Lafayette Oil Center thanks to arrangements made by Abacus Data Exchange to allow us to use and tour their facilities.
Bryan Fusilier will be doing a presentation on virtualization. This will include what virtualization is, its uses in desktop and server environments, how Bryan puts this concept into practice in the workplace using Xen, and a tour of Abacus Data Exchange. Anyone interested in being able to easily test out new operating systems or to implement virtual machines in server environments is encouraged to attend. Please remember to help to spread the word about the meeting to family, friends, classmates, and colleagues!
The second meeting of the Acadiana Open Source Group followed suit with the first meeting and was a great success! Many thanks to the UL Computer Science Department for the use of their very accommodating facilities, Great Cajun Cooking for donating refreshments, and last but not least booksXYZ for continuing to host this web site.
Frank Ducrest gave an excellent and entertaining presentation on the Alice programming language. Frank intends to conduct workshops in the near future for those would might have an interest in learning how to program and have no previous experience, particularly middle and high school students. More information on these workshops will be posted as it becomes available. Ryan Farnell followed up with an interesting and informative presentation on the Ruby programming language. Slides for both talks will be posted within the next few days.
A few announcements:
- A poll was taken and members opted to continue having monthly meetings on the last Thursday of each month.
- Mozilla has begun their Spread Firefox campaign in preparation for the release of Firefox 3. They've asked users to pledge to download in order to set a world record for the highest number of downloads on the first day of a major web browser release.
- An operating system installation "party" is tentatively (depending on the interest level of members) planned for Saturday, June 21 at 2 PM. It will take place at the Lafayette Public Library. Members interested in participating are asked to RSVP on this forum thread. Suggestions for methods to publicize the event are welcome.
- The Capital Area Corporate Recycling Council collects used computer components and recycles them into usable low-cost systems that often go to academic and non-profit organizations. It has been suggested that AOS conduct a Computer Recycling Drive in an effort to help the CACRC further their cause. Members are encouraged to donate and can use this forum thread to coordinate related efforts.
- Cajun PHP is looking for prospective authors interested in writing PHP-related articles for their web site.
- Unfortunately, no entries have been received for the logo contest. The deadline has been extended to the next meeting. After that point, if there is still no interest in member contributions, the original suggestion for a logo will be adopted.
- We're always looking for speakers to put on the schedule for future meetings. Likewise, we want to be aware of topics of interest to members. Please offer contributions where you're able in these areas!
- We're also always looking for sponsors to donate refreshments and door prizes for meetings. Please see the Contact section of the web site and let us know how you'd like to help. Organizations who sponsor meetings are given a link to their web site from this one.
All Acadiana residents with an interest in open source technologies are
invited to attend the May 2008 meeting of the Acadiana Open Source Group on Thursday, May 29 at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will be held in conference room 101 of the Advanced Computer Technology and Research building on UL campus thanks to arrangements made by faculty of the Computer Science Department for us to use their facilities. Attendees may park in Zone 13. See this map for locations of both areas.
Frank Ducrest and Ryan Farnell will be doing a joint presentation on programming basics with the Alice and Ruby programming languages. Experienced programmers and those with no programming experience are encouraged to attend. Please remember to help to spread the word about the meeting to family, friends, classmates, and colleagues!