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Subject: Minutes of the ILUG-Delhi meeting on Sun., 29th April Date: Tuesday 01 May 2007 17:38 From: Gora Mohanty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hello everyone, The last ILUG-Delhi meeting held at the JNU Bio-Informatics Centre on Sun., 29th April. The meeting was pretty well attended, with about 22 people present. Here are the minutes: 1. E-zine: Atul Jha presented the latest version of the E-zine on the site http://ezine.linux-delhi.org. There is currently only one article available online, though apparently there are some eight original articles available with Atul. Many people expressed concern with the fact that little visible progress was being made on the e-zine, despite the fact that it has now been discussed at several ILUG-Delhi meetings. The latest round of problems was due to unfamiliarity with Drupal, and shortcomings in it. A list of action items were drawn up (please see at the bottom), and it was agreed that there would be more active e-zine discussions on this list. 2. http://code.indlinux.net: Raj Mathur presented the facilities available on this server, provided by the NRCF, AU-KBC, primarily for IndLinux work. The same server currently also hosts several IndLinux sites (http://indlinux.org, http://indlinux.net), and a site for NewsRack (http://newsrack.in). http://code.indlinux.net itself has a GForge installation that allows the hosting of open- source projects. The projects should ideally have some relation to Indian language computing, but projects with a significant impact on India, or with a strong participation by developers in India. However, we are *not* considering large-scale hosting along the lines of http://sarovar.org. Gora Mohanty then presented an outline of many of the projects that are on the site. Most of them are in an alpha/pre-alpha state, though several also have useful code on them right now. Project administrators, developers, documentation writers, and web designers are invited to participate by signing up on the site. 3. Indian language URIs: Gaurav Mishra presented an interesting talk on the possibility of Indian language URI's, e.g., http://www.रफ़्तार.com. The typed Unicode URI is converted on the fly into a "Punycode" ASCII representation, which is the site that is actually registered. This scheme is far from complete, e.g., it is not yet possible to have Indian-language equivalents for the three letter, top-level domains, e.g., .com, and there are phishing risks opened up (did you notice that there was a nukta on the pha in the above URI). The talk, along with earlier presentations, will soon be made available online. 4. Election for ILUG-D office: Next month will see the election of a new panel of ILUG-D office-bearers. Detailed rules for the elections, along with a list of the positions, and their associated responsibilities, will be posted soon. Any ILUG-Delhi member in good standing (remember that you will need to re-register at the election meeting) is eligible to contest as many posts as they wish, and can also choose to nominate another member. Peejay (peejay (at) hotpop (dot) com) has kindly consented to be the election officer, so please feel free to send him nominations now. Nominations will close *two* days before the elections, so that Peejay can vet the list, and it can be publicised. I also strongly encourage anyone planning on running to declare this publicly on the list, prepare a manifesto, and plan to speak at the first meeting in May (please see below). 5. Forthcoming meetings: We propose to have two meetings in the month of May, with tentative dates being the 2nd, and 4th Sundays, i.e., May 12th, and 26th. The first meeting will allow prospective candidates to present their manifestos, as well as including planning for Freed [sic!] 2007. The second will be the annual general body meeting (AGBM), including the elections. It is also possible to fit in technical talks in the meetings, but please send me submissions now, instead of at the last minute. 6. Freed 2007 (Freedom in Technology and Software): That is right, we have changed our name! The idea is to aim at a larger population than just Delhi, and is in keeping with our plans to make this really a community event, rather than one restricted to ILUG-D. These ideas, the name, and the tagline came out of several intensive sessions of brainstorming with the help of Rajesh Lalwani, a public relations consultant who is working with us. Here are the highlights of the plans for Freed 2007, with details to come up soon on the website: (a) We would like every FOSS enthusiast in the country to help out in the event. So, besides circling the dates of 28th, and 29th September, 2007, on your calendars, please put your hands up. You can sign up on the mailing list for event planning by sending mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the single word Subscribe in the subject line. [The list names may change to reflect the new event identity, but don't worry -- if that happens you'll be transparently migrated to the new list] (b) With Rajesh's help, we plan to have a much more active publicity campaign, targeting groups that would potentially be interested in the event, including academia, government bodies, and non-governmental organisations. (c) We will also be carrying on a more intensive media campaign, with at least one formal press conference a couple of days before the meeting. (d) Official spokespeople for the event are: Sudev Barar, Kishore Bhargava, and Prof. Andrew Lynn. 7. Action items: (a) E-zine: Atul Jha, and Anand Shankar, with help from other people as needed, will do the following over the next three weeks, i.e., a week before the AGBM: o Involve other people, particularly Vivek Khurana, in solving technical problems with Drupal, and the site. o Prepare a roadmap for the next three bi-monthly issues, which will include a workflow that will allow the identification of possible contributors to running the e-zine, and a timeline for the publication of each issue. o Communicate more actively over this list, so that this can be a shared, sustainable effort. (b) Freed site: Kishore Bhargava. To be up this week. We need to finalise on a conference management application, and send out announcements by the end of this week. Regards, Gora _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
