[ug-dfwosug] Announcement: DFW OpenSolaris User's Group & DSUG

[Bob Netherton]

On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 15:10 -0600, Wences Michel wrote:

> Thank you all for your participation in the DFW OpenSolaris Users
> Group!

More than that, I think we all owe Wences a huge thank you.   When we
started thinking about doing this, we knew we would have some challenges
as our day jobs came into conflict.  Wences has absolutely been a rock,
consistent - always keeping things moving along.   Thanks for all of
your help over the past year.

> 2)    We have formed a volunteer board to help grow and better
> organize the group.
> The volunteer Board Members  for the 2008 Board are:
>         William A. Midyette - J.C. Penney
>         Jerry Kemp - Neiman Marcus
>         Al Hopper - Logical Approach
>         Wences Michel - Sun Microsystems
>         TBD - Sun Microsystems

Thanks guys for stepping up.  We appreciate your assistance and the
group will be better next year as a result of your efforts.  So thanks
again.

> 3)       The Community has decided on the following issues
>       * We will continue Monthly Meeting for 2008 instead of going to
>         every other month schedule

Excellent.  One message that I have heard is that consistency is
important.   No starting, stopping, dropping the ball.   So we
will move forward with this charge.

Since I have been king of the ball droppers, I think it wise to
consider a primary topic with a backup for each month.  We'll
advertise.   Think of it like the NFL - we'll cover a game in your
area unless there's something better :-)

>       * Problem Solving/Brainstorming: Dedicate 15 minutes each
>         meeting  to help community members

The DFW Unix User's Group does this and that sounds like a good idea.

I'd also add a project update section where we can just highlight
OpenSolaris projects that have either kicked off or reached some sort
of milestone.   Perhaps interesting things that have hit one of the
big repositories.   Sort of a human distrowatch.

>       * Try to add a little more systems hardware meeting topics

Cool - so this is the DSUG side of the DFWOSUG/DSUG partnership :-)
Good suggestion - we can do that.   How about if we do one product
per month as a spotlight ?

> 4)    Agenda Planning for Next Year 2008:
>         Jan - Project Indiana, Bob Netherton
>         Feb - X64 & Blades, Terry Konich
>         Mar - xVM & Ops Center, TBD
>         Apr - OpenSolaris & ISCI Storage, Al Hopper
>         May - Identity Managment, TBD
>         Jun - Solaris 10 U5, TBD
>         Jul - Combined Meeting with Fort Worth OSUG - TBD

When we considered starting up an OpenSolaris User's Group, one specific
goal was to avoid being yet another marketing outreach program.  As I
look at the agenda, I'm having a hard time distinguishing between a
users group and a set of lunch and learns.

So I'd really like to throw this idea out for some consideration (and
ultimately as an alternative to the above calendar) - can we begin to
change the focus in the direction of howto sorts of discussions ?
That is one of the things that I really liked about Al Hopper's
presentations, they were different from what we might do on a
sales call.


So I propose the following - and please comment!   I will not assume
silence as concurrence :-)

January - Project Indiana update - this stays as is.   It's a
fascinating topic with loads of controversy.   We'll have our second
developer snapshot about that time, so lots to talk about.  It's also
a good opportunity to catch up on the status of some interesting
projects like Network Automagic, Crossbow, xVM, etc.

February - Implementing an open source web stack on Solaris.   Can we
have a volunteer talk about how to get the parts, assemble them, and
what you learned in the process.   Perhaps compare and contrast the
Solaris and OpenSolaris approach with Linux ?    And the coolstack
too ?   Any volunteers ?

Or how about Jumpstarting LDOMs and Xen domains ?   What do you have to
do to make this stuff work.   How does ZFS play into it ?   iSCSI boot ?


March - Performance Tools and Tips.    We can talk about DTrace, the
DTrace toolkit, graphical performance tools, the new p commands in
Solaris and the general approaches to problem solving.   I have several
speakers in mind for this one.

April - iSCSI and OpenSolaris.   Great topic and Al returns to the
podium.  A great topic, perhaps augmented with a small iSCSI primer
for those not totally immersed in the technology ?


May and on get a bit fuzzy at this point as things may come and go in
terms of importance.  Somewhere in there we should do a what's new in
Solaris discussion, again focused on the application of the feature :-)


Comments, suggestions, questions ???????


bob