<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> Hi folks, I've enjoyed the face-to-face meetings we've had in Brisbane recently [1][2], and i'm wondering if a valuable activity leading back towards re-approval might be to hold technical gatherings more regularly (i'm thinking monthly, in the months where we don't have the social meetings).  Some initial thoughts on about such meetings: <ul> <li>Location:</li> <ul> <li>family-friendly venue</li> <li>central location</li> <li>free parking</li> <li>close to public transport</li> <li>easy access to coffee/food (or at least facilities to prepare such)</li> <li>free/very cheap wireless Internet access</li> <li>preferably a local Ubuntu mirror </li> </ul> <li>Activities: </li> <ul> <li>install-fests</li> <li>informal technical talks about things we're working on</li> <li>share problems or concerns and try to solve them </li> <li>accessible to all levels of technical expertise (no elitist developers excluding newbies)</li> <li>open to potential Ubuntu users as well as actual Ubuntu users </li> <li>log our actions on IRC and/or wiki </li> </ul> </ul> I would be willing to organise something like this on a semi-regular basis (say once per quarter).  I'm sure i could talk my church into hosting it, but it fails on the central location, and the ADSL speed is not great. A few questions for you all to ponder: <ul> <li>Is this a useful thing?  Would you attend more than 1 meeting per year?</li> <li>Would you be willing to contribute an informal talk if you did attend?</li> <li>Would a central location be essential, or would multiple meetings in different geographical areas work better?</li> <li>Do you know of any good venues? </li> <li>Any other thoughts/suggestions?</li> </ul> Thanks in advance, Paul [1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ubuntu.org.au/node/69">http://www.ubuntu.org.au/node/69</a> [2] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ubuntu.org.au/brisbane-lucid-release-party">http://www.ubuntu.org.au/brisbane-lucid-release-party</a> </body> </html>