Announcement- BAD meeting 031112 This next Wed 6-9+PM, SBAY, Real & 1st Virtual

[Hereon]

Welcome, all, to another exciting month of Bay Area Debianness!
You are invited to the 1st Real & Virtual BAD meeting!

I'm calling the November meeting for the second Wednesday of the month,
November 12, 2003 (The KDE clock-calendar is your friend!) from 6:00+ PM
to 9:00+.  The main real meeting location will be held in the South
(SanFrancisco) Bay Area.

The goal of the meeting is to achieve a fullly immersive total sensory 3D
virtual reality cyberspaceetic meeting on the surface of the Sun, for all
participants.

(We'll see how far we get.)

The main real location will be some place in the South Bay ("Silicon
Valley" for all you "out of Bay Arean"  BADians).  There can also be
other, multiple, real locations, which will be linked with the SBAY
location by CyberSpace (TM,(c), patented by some big company that's
always changing corporation names, etc., ...)  ((or, maybe that's
"cyberspace", copylefted by some group of people who aren't those happy
software proles linking arms and singing the "Internationale" while
freely sharing the fruits of their code-writing labor.))

Read on for further details:
(If you know someone who is in High School & is a Debian package
maintainer, make sure they are at this meeting and! not! at! some!
ghishee! concert!!!!!)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, so yesterday, after the SVLUG meeting, someofus got together &
discussed locations that are suitable to teleporting people out of the
universe, . . ., um, I mean suitable to provide a free wifi internet
connection to a group of 5-20 BAD members for a BAD meeting in the South
Bay Area.

Among the suggestions were:
1) The Dana Street Cafe in Mountain View (Just off Fidel Castro St, right
past Central Expressway, just over the train tracks, left down from 101
(depending on which way you're coming.)).

2) The Santana Row "It's not a shopping center. It's the center of the
South Bay's shopping universe" mojo upscale shopping & dining experience
mall & apartment living village experience off Winchester, right kitty
corner across from the Winchester shotgun mystery "house", just off
Stevens Creek, and about a good football field from the (Netcom?)
building that used to house Netcom? back in the wild west days of the
inet.  (U know, before it became a "thang".)

3) Cat's Cafe (sp?) near downtown San Joseph, directly across from the
SJ,C,State campus (on 4th Street?). (Is "San Jose" a State?)

4) QCup (not QCat, & not that kinda cup either!) in MillyenniumPitas. 
(Conveniently located on one of the big ole main streets in that town.) 
(Just a hop, skip and a jump from that 880 freeway thingy.)

A quick perusal of those sites at two in the morning produced the
conclusion that, yes, one of them might be suitable, . . ., er, fit the
exacting standards, for a BAD meeting place.

Now, the deal is,:
#1, Dana, looks nice, and according to two sources, is "easily able to
contain a BAD meeting", and "totally too crowded to contain a BAD
meeting.  I mean, I been there when we tried to have a ... meeting there,
and the Italian language class was trying to meet there, and there was a
big ole fight over who got to have the tables & chairs, and ", but I
digress.  (Nice homey look, about 5-10 small tables.  Inet worked at 2am.
 IRC from the passenger seat to the drivers seat via NL server, cool!)

#2: Mojo Hummer & Mercedez Benz & pseudo tough looking pair of kids
hanging out at 2 in the morning, and a _4_ _block_ _long_ tmobile site!,
(viva tmobile forever!), has held a BayLisa Board Meeting in the
courtyard, but that wouldn't be suitable for an evening in November, and
has got way lots of resturants, and one of them might be a reasonably
priced mexican resturant & have _lots_ of seating for a BAD group, but
the SantanaShopping&SpendingYourMoneyExperience tmobile signup for a day
(please give me your _money_) website was having database issues.

#3 (I'm running out of ink, here, folks.) Seems nice at 2am. :)  Got's a
signal, & connects to ole Sid, but can't get packets in & out (sid box
now got issues, I think).  Outside tables too cold for november. Forgot
to check how many inside tables. (3? 5? 7???)  Closes about 10, I think
(or, was it 9?  Gotta find out. :(.  Darn. (Something closed at 9.  What
was it? Dana???))  And there is a 24 Hr Jack in the box 2 blocks away for
the hang out late w/out inet crowd.

#4: QCup, nice soft chairs (& some regular tables?) IIRC.  Has some
highup tables (IIRC from long ago) that aren't suitable for a
sit-around-&-meet meeting.  Am told that it should be very uncrowded on a
Wed eve, hence great 4a BAD meeting. Open till 12 Midnight. (Are there
enough chairs & tables??)

Bottom line:
We'll meet the 12th someplace.  Send in your comments now about the
preferred meeting site in SiValley, and I'll chose one of them by some
method in time for locals to get to the meeting.  (ie, on or before next
tuesday.)
============================================================

The Virtureal & the ElCaminoReal:
       _____________________________
OK, so THE REAL TOPIC OF THE MEETING
       -----------------------------
(in addition to the everpresent "talk-about whatever_is_of_interest 'to
BAD attendees'" topic) is: let's all GET TOGETHER in real & cyberspace, &
TRY TO GET AN IRC SERVER GOING, and maybe even VOICE COM, between local &
remote "attendees", in preparation for doing the WHIRLED WHIDE DEBIAN FSW
& Etc VIDEO CONFERENCE / HACKATHON_A_GOGO.

For this, we'll need people to bring wifi laptops running your favorite
FSW blend, (plusses if you bring a headset w/ mic & earphones) (PS -
don't forget your AC adapter __AND A POWERLINE PLUG SPLITTER!!!___) and
bring knowledge of IRC, &/or setting up a wifi access point on a laptop,
&/or voice over inet, & etc, and let's put it all together & get it
working, and, once it's working, let's take it all down & go home & have
a good nights sleep.  :)

This will probably be most fun for SV locals, since it will be a "setting
it up" party.

Remote virtualers - we welcome you to join us!!!!! (I do believe we got
some BAD members who are _way_ out in the hinterlands from the BA!) 
We'll do our best to get you in by IRC.  Maybe we'll even get some voice
going!!! You'll probably have to make do this time w/just text com. 
(But, hey - one's gotta .txt before you can .wav!)  You will be doing us
a favor by attempting to join us from a remote site, as this will help us
identify & overcome the issues of achieving the very important part of
getting the remotes properly connected!  :)

[For _this_ meeting I'm not majorly actively soliciting remote groups,
other than remote BAD members, to join us.  I think I will pass the
message on to the LUGOD folks, the leader of which has expressed
interested in this project.  I think it would be great if the Davis folks
could get a few people together & join us by IRC (& voice, if we can get
that going). :) But, this is just the first attempt at getting the
remotes going (& geting everyone wifi'd, even!), so I think it wouldn't
be too productive or coordinatable to try to get lots of remote groups
up.  That's a goal for the next meetings.  Anyway, that's just MHO.]

===============================================

The Bottom, Bottom Line:
1) Send in your suggestions for other possible meeting locations in SV,
&/or comments + or - about the suitability of the above four locations.
2) Send in any other productive comments.

3) We'll all have fun sittin' there, reading & a postin' to the list for
the next several days.
4) Somehow, on or before next tuesday, I'll make a final decision which
location the local SV meeting will be held at.
5) Let's have some fun, and create some great new technologies &
abilities!  :)

=
(Sleep....Must...get...sleep.........)

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