Room change! - theatre at west end of building T

The Annual General Meeting of the Ottawa Carleton Linux Users Group will he held April 5, 2012 at Algonquin College, Room T130, Building T. starting at 1900.

Below is the proposed agenda for the 2012 AGM. There are two important items that we ask members to think about in advance.

1) Nominations for Board members -- we always need capable volunteers to serve on the board.

2) Town Hall discussion on the future of OCLUG

While we remain an active group, the nature of our activities is changing. In particular, with Linux much more widely used and appreciated, along with active forums for help and discussion, there is less incentive to participate in a "live" meeting. Notably, the 2011 AGM did not manage to provide a full slate of board members. During the year we added one Board member who had indicated willingness at the AGM, but needed to check availability, and John Nash participated (non-voting) to provide continuity. This is, however, a less than desirable situation.

The Board therefore proposes that the AGM hold a discussion to provide direction for - adapting OCLUG to the realities we are experiencing. These afflict many volunteer organizations at this time. - finding volunteers to help run events or to carry out specific tasks

Some ideas for events that are a little different from our norm:

• A User Group Festival, in a hall where many Ottawa user groups can offer information tables and chat with each other and anyone who comes out. A great day for this is Software Freedom Day on Sat Sept 15.
• a hack-fest, possibly with Group 51, with the hacking activity displayed and explained.
• Small, local meetings to help people with computer problems as a way to find new members. Our outreach has been limited in the last couple of years, apart from the Leavitt Memorial Seminar and (possibly) IPv6 Summit.

We are also exploring how we can do a better job of advertising our activities, and John Sebastian Taylor is leading this effort.

Sadly, we do need a Plan B if there are too few nominees. It is not entirely clear what the legalities are if we proceed to an election and there are too few Board nominees to provide quorum. Hence it would be better to decide a course of action during the AGM BEFORE the election if we know there are too few nominees. Our constitution requires that our assets be passed to a similar organization -- finding one could be difficult. It may also be possible to appoint some trustees who would monitor a (paid) service to maintain mailing lists and web site for Linux-related events in Ottawa for some period (e.g., 5 years). There appears to be fairly solid interest in and usage of the mailing list, for example, but there is a need for some management thereof.

We could also revise our organization to do fewer things using fewer people, such as small meetings with no speakers, fewer meetings per year, or some merging of activities with other groups like Computers for Communities.

The discussion of the future of OCLUG is intended to either rejuvenate the group or else wind it up in an orderly way.

== AGM agenda outline

1) Financial report

2) Annual report

3) Future of OCLUG

4) Election

5) New business

6) Adjournment

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7) Games

8) Beer SIG

Richard's photos from the meeting

Darcy's photos from the meeting

Bring your own idea to try out some blog site or blog tool, or new web language or PHP, or just try setting up a web site on your laptop! Bring a friend who wants a web site!

Bring your expertise in any kind of web related stuff to help out people who want to try out a web site. Maybe let us know on the list what you can contribute?

Update: Location and time are now correct.

Our Jan meeting is canceled, due to not having a room/day assigned by Algonquin.