Thanks to all those that attended the first meeting of BLUG (now renamed to FOSSACT). We had a good turn-out of about 24 people from local IT companies and Government.

We achieved the objectives of the meeting which were to:

1. Agree on meeting locations,
2. Agree on meeting date/times, and
3. Form a committee

These details can be found in the About page.

An initial committee was formed and the following people volunteered (thanks guys!):

• Keith Wright
• David Symmons
• Neil Cox
• Finn Blucher
• Justin Freeman

The meeting started off with a general welcome & explanation of why Canberra needs to have a user group focussed on business needs and FOSS.

A welcome form was provided for people to complete to capture interests, initial feedback and contact details. Attendee areas of interest and current activity in FOSS included:

• Zope/Plone (mentioned more than once)
• Oracle on Linux
• Small business Linux desktop/servers
• Thin client
• Linux desktop
• Anti-spam
• USB booting
• Turn-key hardware platforms
• Web services
• Asterisk
• Linux for end users
• FOSS on Windows
• And commercial FOSS and support services

I outlined what we could achieve with such a group and this led into an open discussion of possible future FOSSACT meeting topics. I did have a rough agenda for the meeting, points we discussed were:

• Is BLUG an appropriate name? FOSSACT? I suggested that the group be renamed from BLUG to FOSSACT as this better represents the coverage of the group, which is not focussed on Linux solely. A quick bar meeting passed this motion ;)

• Paid membership, annual fee to cover room hire & food. I posed the question of whether or not group membership should be free or paid. And the reasoning behind requiring paid membership. The general concensus was that paid membership was a good idea.
• No uninvited solicitations for business. I stated that the user group would not be an open forum for members or vendors to pitch sales presentations or solicit business. Unless specifically invited by the user group or member. A key concept of the user group is that members can interact with each other without being subjected to high/low pressure sales.
• What do YOU want to get out of the user group? Referring back to the welcome form, we discussed what we can achieve as a group and what would interest people.
• User group rules. We need to document a brief set of rules and guidelines so that everyone knows what the user group is for, what is acceptable and not acceptable.

Finn kindly brought along some SUSE 10 Desktop DVD's which were snapped up. And I brought along some Fedora Linux & Ubuntu CD's, which also quickly disappeared.

The meeting lasted about 2 hours and I was very happy by the response - definitely a need for our group to exist.

The next meeting will be held on 1st September, at the Kurrajong Hotel. Meeting agenda is still to be finalised at this stage. However, Finn from Novell has offered to present AppArmour to the group.

If you have any particular topics see or would like to present then please let us know.