KWLUG Meeting: Monday, January 7 2013, 7pm

Oh January! You promise a fresh start, a clean slate, an opportunity to reflect on the mistakes of years past and make some new ones. Here in the plush offices of KWLUG World Headquarters, we are not immune to January's call. Our focus groups and market research have revealed a problem newer and less experienced meeting attendees run into: people attend one or two meetings, find that the technical content of presentations are way above their heads, and feel intimidated about attending future meetings. Appealing to newer and less experienced Linux users is definitely part of KWLUG's corporate vision, so beginning this year we are attempting to offer a wider variety of presentations, and to clearly label those presentations we expect will be more beginner-friendly (which is not to say they will be expert-unfriendly, or that highly-technical topics are disappearing from the meeting schedule entirely).

This month marks our first attempt at this experiment. David Lloyd Carr will kick things off by talking about "SelfSourced software" -- computer programs you write to "scratch your own itch". The idea of a beginner-friendly presentation on the topic of computer program might sound pretty crazy, but David promises to keep the content accessible to a general audience.

Our second presentation of the evening will feature a topic super-hot amongs the makers and nerd set: the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, tiny, general purpose computer on a circuit board. John Eddie Kerr bought one of these devices recently, and he will relate his adventures in exploring its functionality. Any discussion of the Raspberry Pi carries the risk of launching itself into the ubertechnical stratosphere, but maybe it helps that John is a librarian and not an engineer?

As usual, our meetings will start at 7pm (but we start setting up the room around 6:30pm, and always appreciate additional help.)

We are always looking for presentation offers, so if you have a topic you would like to present then please get in touch by emailing me offlist. It would definitely be nice to slot in some more beginner-friendly presentations, but presentations on more technical topics are also welcome.

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This meeting is newbie-friendly.

David Lloyd Carr writes his own software. He says:

Frustrated that there just doesn't seem to be a program or app that does exactly what you want? Maybe there is, but it does a lot of other things too that just get in the way. Maybe you just can't see paying for something so trivial. "I just want it to... How hard can that be?"

The answer may be, "Not so hard." Writing your own software has never been easier. Together we'll look at a few programs I wrote for my own personal use and how you can go about creating your own.

John Eddie Kerr will tell us about his adventures with the low-cost RaspberryPi computer.