Bruce Perens is speaking at the The Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG) on Feb 19th. BALUG is a lively and social group that is different from other LUGs because we sit down and eat dinner with our guest speakers. More than just listening to what they have to say, this gives us a chance to really get to know our speakers.

BALUG is open to the public and we hope you will join us, but please help us out by sending a quick RSVP:

RSVP@balug.org

Title:
"Innovation Goes Public"

Abstract:
Presented by Bruce Perens, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative in software.

Open Source provides much of the software infrastructure for many of the world's largest companies and organizations: Merrill Lynch, Google, Pixar, Amazon, the City of New York, and probably you - although you might not know it. Innovative products like Linux, Firefox, and Apache are the market-leaders in their sectors, but there are tens of thousands of Open Source programs, used for just about everything. But the economics of Open Source are non-intuitive: how can you make money by giving software away? Why did IBM de-emphasize AIX, after spending Billions, in favor of Linux, the product of a loose collaboration of programmers that it can never control? How can the world's greatest city trust Open Source to help manage its jails?

Bruce Perens will show how Open Source is often the most effective strategy for creating and utilizing new innovation. He will explain the economics of Open Source and how it works for profit-generating companies. His talk will be clear to beginners yet informative even for Open Source pros.


Upcoming 2008 Meeetings
Jan 15th - Eric S. Raymond
Feb 19th - Bruce Perens
March 24th - Mark Shuttleworth
April 15th - Eric Allman
May 20th - Jeremy Allison
June 16th - Andrew Morton
July 15th - Mike Linksvayer, CTO Creative Commons

With such a great lineup of speakers, why not subscribe to BALUG's extremely low volume announce list:

http://lists.balug.org/listinfo.cgi/balug-announce-balug.org

Meeting Details
6:30PM
February 19th, 2008
Four Seas Restaurant
731 Grant Avenue
San Francisco, CA
94108

PARKING:
Easy parking for $5 with in 1 block of the restaurant.

COST:
BALUG events are always free. However, dinner is $13 for those that want to eat.

About BALUG:
BALUG is lively gathering of Linux users free software enthusiasts that combines great food, community & intimate access to featured speakers. We meet in the bar of the Four Seas Restaurant from 6:30pm. At 7pm, we share a family-style Chinese dinner, which is followed by our guest speaker.

Color me green, very green.

As a member & meeting organizer at HLUG (Houston), I have few Q's:

• How do you get such great speakers?
• How do you finance their appearances? Surely not all of them live in the Bay Area.
• What is your normal attendance?
• Any estimate of total membership?
• What is your form of legal organization? -- i.e. are you incorporated?

BTW, HLUG operates as part of HAL-PC (Houston Area League of PC Users), & as result we are able to have about 9 meetings per month; but never w/ such great speakers.

>How do you get such great speakers?

I try to contact them through someone they already know or I ask them directly.

> How do you finance their appearances? Surely not all of them live in the Bay Area.

Actually, many of them do live in the bay area. Untangle, the company I work for, paid for Eric S. Raymond's traveling expenses. If you can't find a sponsor to help with traveling expenses, try to figure out when prospective speakers are already going to be in the area and ask them then. This is what I did with Mark Shuttleworth.

> What is your normal attendance?

61 people showed up at our January meeting and I expect this number to grow in 2008.

> Any estimate of total membership?

We don't have any formal membership, its really more of a community.

> What is your form of legal organization? -- i.e. are you incorporated?

None. Balug is a website and group of people that get together and share chinese food while taking about F/OSS.

What he said.
Try being on the other side of the globe ....

syg00:

assuming that your LUG is in Australia, why not try to coordinate something with speakers attending linux.conf.au? I appreciate that Australia is a big place and you may be no where near the conference location, but it does give you a shot. And Australia has a number of famous people in F/OSS.

Wikipedia: Australian_computer_programmers

-Andrew

Cheers mate - I was just venting.
linux.conf.au is great - I've had to miss the last couple, but some awesome names turn up and talk. Tridge, Rusty, Andrew Morton, Mark Shuttleworth gave a good keynote in New Zealand ... Top stuff.
Linus even passed by a couple of years back.

Lots of people can't get to them despite the great value for money.
I was just envious of your efforts - keep it up.

Big fan of the Bruce.

Any chance you will make any type of recording of the event available?

How many attended?

How was the talk received?

Was it recorded?

archtoad6 wrote:

>How many attended?
About 50 people attended.

>How was the talk received?
Very well, it was a fun evening.

>Was it recorded?
Not officially, but lots of cameras were in the house so something may turn up

Thanks for the answers.
Would you mind posting a link if something does turn up?