PLUG Operations: Events, New members

About

• (this document: https://hackmd.io/@plug/r1mD75lWkl via https://hackmd.io/@plug)

• PLUG is associated with Linux Australia. We exist to organise events, provide education, and generally promote the use of Linux and Free and Open Source software

  • That's more than Linux and more than Perth! but "PLUG" is too good an acronym to give up lightly.
  • We used to have a logo that made the whole-of-WA more visible…

Information

Checklist

getting started

Subscribing to the mailing lists

checking out local events

The Perth Linux Users Group lists all the activities in the calendar located at the home page of our website: https://www.plug.org.au/

Most of our events, such as committee meetings and talks, are open to everyone. Attending a meet up is the perfect first step towards getting involved, it instantly familiarises you with the other members, and allows you to directly become a member.

Becoming a member

Membership fee is $50 a year, or $20 for students. you can sign up online by filling in the membership form here

Being a member will give you voting rights at the AGM, and PLUG the money it needs to keep running.

Getting involved: beginner

Attend meetups

Meetups are advertised on the PLUG calendar How to attend a meetup:

• For most events like general meetings you are fine to simply show up in Person at the address and time listen on the event.
• If no address and time is listed on an event and you would like to attend, email committee@plug.org.au to let them know you are interested.

Arts and crafts

Use your hobbies to foster foss! Do you enjoy art, Crochet, or other productive passtimes? You are welcome to employ them to make Linux related knick knacks we can use as prizes or merchandise to give away.

Placeholder thing

Getting involved: advanced

Committee

• Being a member of the Committee means you get to control what direction the group will be going in. The committee is broken down into subcommittees that organise different aspects of the group
• Event organising group
  • Running events - the kind of events that we'd ourselves like to attend - is at the core of why we're here
  • teaching and learning applied Computer Science! and discussing and sharing about Free & Open Source Software and Technology
  • As surveyed, members join for the opportunity to do things in real life, and due to the support we have offered people in the past
  • Regular events can get a "run-sheet", a checklist (on our website) of:
    • Preparation
      • How early can the announcements/promo be done?
      • When's good for a final email reminder?
      • Who's bringing what and when? Backup plans?
    • Setup & Mingling (involve the attendees!)
      • Get sign on door with phone number for access
      • Getting a computer network running and (automatically?) tested-working? Plug it in. The Beryl gl.inet travel router will work off some of the Spacecubed network ports:
        • Audio port at Town Hall
        • Workspaces near the Vault
      • AV setup
        • Camera+battery eliminator PSU
        • HDMI capture to AV laptop
        • Battery tester: check the batteries in the speaker/audience microphones (and have spares)
        • USB powered/USB audio-out mixer
        • Boot av laptop, login, go to BBB
        • Login to BBB as user that can hand out presenter/moderator roles (need to self-host?)
        • When multiple cameras/avnodes are in use:
          • AV team, one per camera, keep video framed (plus audio?)
          • cut between shots on non-live cameras
      • Did we promise light refreshments? drinks and ice? light snacks?
        • or something more - who's making the pizza order and when?
    • Core
      • Join PLUG! Sponsor us!
      • Call-out thanks to sponsors
      • What's coming up for PLUG?
    • Teardown
      • packup and close the venue?
      • do we upload a video? minutes? documents? photos?
        • summary to a sponsor?
  • Every event has some critical elements that would usually go into its announcements, or be implied by the regular sort of events we run:
    • TITLE
    • DATE
    • TIME
    • VENUE
      • Any irregular venue or time needs a venue liason, someone to check that the event is good to go, book a room or a table
        • Someone to make sure any updates that the venue wants to pass back to us get noticed and dealt with if needed
        • Any scheduled but cancelled event needs the venue liason to inform the venue where that's relevant
      • Who's the backup venue liason if the scheduled time is getting close and we're not sure if the above has happened yet?
        • Check with the first liason, with plenty of time to jump in, and communicate what's needed to the venue and back to the whole committee
        • What if the venue tends to contact the last person who talked to them, directly, do the rest of us know enough to back them up?
      • Spacecubed/Riff venue: http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/private/committee/2024-February/011314.html
      • Artifactory venue: http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/private/committee/2024-October/011556.html
    • ADDRESS
    • ACCESS
      • Any special tips on how to access the venue? Lifts, stairs, ramps, locked doors, parking?
      • How to find us? Landmarks, signs, "Look for Tux", particularly on excursion events?
      • If someone shows up early, or if the venue closes, what's the etiquette - wait outside? call the hosts?
    • COST
    • HOST
      • "PLUG", but who specifically, on this occasion, is coming to open up and welcome people; and stay to the end to pack up and close?
      • Who's the specific, on this occasion, backup if the first host is running behind?
      • We're a grassroots member-run organisation, it's OK if the host shows up at the same time as the first attendees and we share in any setup and welcome
    • CONTACT
    • WEBSITE
      • Sometimes a particular WEBSITE/WEB/URL needs to stand out, a place for more details, or to book or RSVP, not buried in the surrounding text
    • AGENDA
      • People want to know what's going on so they can decide if they want to go, "the usual" is not enough detail to draw new people in
      • …but circumstances change on the day, if the people attending all want to do something different or in a different order, that's OK too!
      • If there's a speaker, their blurb and title of their talk, free of embarrassing typos and mistakes
  • Promotion
    • http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/private/committee/2024-October/011594.html
    • We've got an event pencilled in, we need to tell people about it
    • Nice and early
      • it's much the same effort to run the event, regardless of whether we tell people about it 3 hours, 3 days, or 3 months in advance, but short notice is likely to reduce attendance
      • as a practical final deadline, it's helpful to have all the details of the next recurring event about to be announced at the current one
        • "if you liked N, come back next month for N++, bring a friend!"
    • First and foremost in our main public calender on https://www.plug.org.au/ (or https://www.plug.org.au/events)
      • As events are copied to other promotional locations, there's often some to-and-fro bugfixing/tweaking, going back to the primary calendar and making sure it's useful for copy-and-paste updates of the other promotional channels
    • Recurring events save some effort, but it means fixing up/changing/cancelling placeholder events is vital to do
    • Checklist:

      • TITLE/DATE/TIME/VENUE/ADDRESS/ACCESS/COST/HOST/CONTACT/WEBSITE/AGENDA

      • Most announcements need most of those details, but if further updates are going to be difficult, point people back to a central self-serve contact point
    • plug@plug.org.au mailing list, where we get the word out to our existing members and anyone that wants to stay in touch
      • "save the date" long-term announcements as well as "it's on this week/month!" reminders
      • sometimes we update members@plug.org.au for "due diligence" that we get an official announcement to all our current/recent financial members, of course we make those messages public, too
      • these messages appear on a nice visible, linkable, web archive
    • meetup.com is where we've got a lot of our new members, outreach from, recently
    • events.raspberrypi.com can give us visibility, but every change needs to be submitted 2+ weeks in advance, approved, and still needs some other visible link on the Internet to put details/RSVPs
    • venues like spacecubed.com , artifactory.org.au have their own calendars, chat channels
    • Linkedin/Facebook/X… sometimes!
    • cross-promotion with relevant groups

Advocate

Maintain

Technical

membership onboarding process

• go to the "membership" section of plug.org.au
• new users fill in sign up form, existing users log in.
• ssh into the server via their ssh RSA identity key. still uses the old RSA key system. you get the public RSA key by creating it with ssh-keygen, you then give it to someone who has access to the server who can then associate your RSA key with the machine which gives you access.
• having logged in, LDAP can be read with sudo slapcat

:info: goals is to update this system so it uses 2f auth password rather than old school RSA key

Streaming Service

Mailing list details

uploading minutes and basic website updates.

• Generate Calendar Link

• Upload minutes

• add minutes to github

• ssh into the virtual machine (power.plug.org.au)

• sudo -u into admin

• cd into plugorgau.github.io

• git pull

• sed -i 's/^enabledGitInfo/#\0/' config.toml

• ../hugo/hugo.sh

• rsync -a public/ /home/plug/public_html/

• Access Socials (YouTube, Mastodon, etc)