LUGFest I
LUG Fest Wrap Up
by Orv Beach
About a half-dozen folks were at Nortel at 11 a.m. Saturday morning to setup for the LUGFest. (Dan [Zahn], Gareth [Greenaway], Mike [Hughes] and I set up the tables, power distribution, and LAN hubs and switches Friday night).
By noon we had 15 or so people setting up. Everything went pretty smoothly. The only glitch I heard about was Bob [Sully] not being able to make X-Windows drive a 15" external Samsung monitor. So he had to use his laptop's LCD, which was ok for what he was presenting.
We had between 30 and 35 people at the LUGFest almost all afternoon. Our peak headcount was 40, and we had about 45 different people cycle through. Of the people there, only about 11 or 12 were SCLUG regulars (plus a few "irregulars): me, Dan [Zahn], Gareth [Greenaway], Mitch [Brown], Jeff [Carlson], Mike [Hughes], Craig [Zeller] , Ken, and Jr. Also there were Betty, Tarry, Jeff ?, and a couple of others whose names I don't know yet (we REALLY need to use name tags..)
We-came-the-farthest prize: shared between Ryon and Barbara, both from Glendora (about 65 miles). Oddly enough, they don't know each other. Charlie came from Arcadia, Ismet came out from Manhatten Beach, and Alex came from Santa Barbara. There were a few others that I didn't get information from.
We had 17 machines set up on the network. All but one were full-time Linux boxes. Dan used the projector and DVD under Windows to show The Matrix, which ran to completion during the LUGFest
NETWORK Attaboys - For this Fest we had a Bay Networks Baystack 450 10/100 ethernet switch connecting all machines on the south side of tHe cafeteria. Craig and Roberto win the Network Attaboy for the LUGFest; their machines were the only ones to successfully negotiate 100MBps/Full Duplex between their NIC and the ethernet switch. The others plugged in were running an assortment of 100Meg/HDX, 10Meg/HDX, and one or two 10Meg/FDX (which isn't really standardized). Craig, Roberto - would be interested to know what NIC, driver, and distribution you used at the LUGFest (info to me, not the list).
Helper Attaboys: Doug Stanfield from Nortel (not a SCLUG member), brought his SERIOUS PA system. We used it for announcements, drove it with streaming MP3 audio from a Linux box, then drove it with audio from from the DVD player during the playing of The Matrix. Thanks, Doug!
SCLUG Attaboys -SCLUG itself was complimented by several people:
Ismet (I think that was who it was) from LILAX, was very enthusiastic about the whole SCLUG setup in general and the LUGFest in particular. He said (not sure if he was joking or not), that he was going to tell all his LAXLUG guys to come out here for the meetings :-)
Also, someone (I can't remember who) who belongs/belonged to SGVLUG said that in all the time he was there, only 3 people ever did demos (Craig and two others). He was VERY complimentary about how everyone in SCLUG could successfully demo some aspect of Linux and its applications.
Highest Interest: based on the size of the crowds around him most of the afternoon, Craig's talk on firewalling and IP-masquerading was the MOST popular presentation. One person who came from a LONG ways away told me that just the info that Craig put out made the long drive worthwhile!
So, pat yourself on the backs, folks, for a job well done. You put a lot of work in, it came off just fine, and you deserve to be proud of yourselves. I think we're ready for next year's Demo Day.
Notes for next time:
- - better publicity. Local hardcopy posters need to be done. - - MORE CD's to give away; almost all of the CD's we provided were gone by 2 p.m. - - better/more signs to the bathrooms :-)
And if Gareth says ANYTHING about another activity of this type in the next six months, someone hogtie him and stuff a printout in his mouth! :-)
- - Orv -