[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: BigBlueButton, RealLife Mobile Messaging

[Paul Nijjar]

Are you feeling isolated and lonely? Are you desperately craving more
human interaction than a mass e-mail can offer? Maybe it is
time to quit staring at your computer monitor and interact with other
living, breathing human beings. 

Wait a minute. What am I saying?! Living, breathing, human beings are
scary! But staring at your computer monitor at walls of text lacks
that social touch. Is there nothing in between?

Raul Suarez may have the answer. It's called BigBlueButton, and it's a
slick teleconferencing/webseminar package that allows you to see and
hear other people without leaving the safety of your computer desk.
BigBlueButton supports voice and video participation, slide sharing in
a variety of formats, visually share the interactions on a computer
desktop, and more. 

Or maybe you are more interested in communicating with others behind
the safety of your smartphone. In this case, Norman Young's
presentation might be of interest to you. He ported an app called
"RealLife Mobile Messaging" from Maemo to Android, and in addition to
showing off his handiwork he will share some of the many lessons he
learned along the way. If you are looking to transfer Linux
development experience to the Android environment, this might be the
presentation for you. 

Of course, to see these presentations it would be helpful to
physically attend the KWLUG meeting, and there might be other living,
breathing human beings. But don't worry; other than the break and the
after-meeting at Zeke's, you can pretend that nobody else is there.
Just stare at the presentation slides and listen to the soothing tones
of our presenters, and you (in which I include "I") will be fine. 

Maybe you're the type of person who finds Wikipedia too social. Or
maybe you're looking for a lightweight multiplatform note-taking
personal wiki application. In this case you might be interested in
this month's FLOSS Fund nominee: ZimWiki. You can read more about
ZimWiki and see it in action at http://zim-wiki.org/ . 

If you are looking for a bit more meatspace interaction in your life,
there are a number of events coming up that feature LUG members: 

- On Saturday, Aug 27th in Ottawa, KWLUG member Richard Weait will be
  presenting "OpenStreetMap and Open Data" at FOSSLC2011, the
  "Software Developer's Haven" conference. Some guy named Stallman got
  higher billing than Richard, but that's surely a typo. Learn more
  about the event here: http://fosslc.org/drupal/sc2011

- Software Freedom Day is coming on September 17, and LUG members are
  helping organize the event again this year. If you would like to
  give a short talk, help support the installfest, make a donation or
  help in some other way contact me and I will get you in touch with the
  organizers. 
  
- If you're up for a trip to Vancouver, KWLUG member (alumnus?) Rob
  Day will be presenting "A Beginner's Guide to Kernel Programming" 
  at the LinuxCon North America. 

Assuming you are eager to brave the snow and bitter winds, our August
meeting will be held at the usual location: 

St John's Kitchen
97 Victoria Street North
Kitchener
(at the Corner of Victoria and Weber)

There is car parking at the Worth a Second Look parking lot and
bicycle parking along the side of the building.

- Paul 
-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org