[EdLUG] May Meeting | Emulators talk, EdLUG's online visibilty

[Tai Kedzierski]

Hello everyone,

In this mail:

* Meetups / venue
* May talk
* EdLUG online presence
* EdLUG online community / chat

TL;DR =

1. We're at the Royal Dick for the next three months, booked into the
private room
2. May's meetup is a talk, about writing emulators for the NES and Atari
8800, and how fun it is :-)
3. Is there anywhere we can have presence online that helps us gain
visibility, and that also chimes with our "open and free" ethos?
4. Slack or Riot.im ? Have you used either or know groups who have used
them for community building?

+++ Venue

There was a good turnout last week for the April meetup, thanks everyone
who attended, hope it was enjoyable for all! I was able to attend in person
after all, and book us in formally for the next few months - so we're
sorted for May, June and July.

When we were in, we happened to coincide with a gig night somewhere else in
the building, and most of the people going to it were in the bar, making
for a loud atmosphere. A couple members highlighted that this would not be
convenient for talks.

I've had a talk with the bar manager and booked us in therefore for the
next three meetings to use the private room. I've even bought a portable
projector screen, and I have a portable HDMI projector to use with it.
Fingers crossed, this setup will work *flawlessly*. *ahem*

+++ May meetup: talk

I had more or less planned to do a talk myself for the May meetup around
the changes to the website ; however that plan has changed.

An exchange student from Canada, Rhys, whom I met at March's TechMeetup,
was there too, and was showing us some stuff he had done with emulators,
all very fascinating stuff which got much attention. I asked if he could do
a talk, and the last month he could do was May, after which his exchange
programme ends and he will be returning to Canada.

Therefore, I've pushed back my talk - I will probably do it in June - and
Rhys will be taking the May slot. Look forward to it!

Event details on Open Tech Calendar [1]:

Writing an Emulator to Run Ancient Software on a Modern Computer

Writing an emulator that can run 30+ year old software on a modern computer
is incredibly fun, and easier than you'd think. This talk will give an
overview of how emulators work, and include demos of emulators for the
Nintendo Entertainment System and Altair 8800, going over how they work at
the source code level. No knowledge of computer hardware will be assumed.


+++ Online presence

I've been wanting to find a way of giving better visibility to the events
that we do (currently, meetups and talks, but more perhaps later).

I've set up a "facebook page" [2] and hope to garner more interest from
that front, but it feels.... wrong to be on that platform, given our "open
and free" ethos. Is there a better place for us to be, that has visibility?
Our presence on the Open Tech Calendar is a good start, where else can we
be?

+++ Online community

The other part of this query is, I've been wanting to explore having a more
"lively" online resource where people can easily come to talk, share
information, tips, and generally create a more active online community
around EdLUG, perhaps even giving rise to even more informal and impromptu
gatherings -- without swamping the mailing list with inbox noise.

Slack is popular for this purpose, but is non-Free.

A more open solution is Riot [3] (requires an account on a third-party
instance, by default Matrix.org), which also allows users to host their own
server as an option. I'd still have to do some research on whether one can
take one's data with them when switching instances, but Matrix.org does
have a good Privacy Policy [4], which implements Right to be Forgotten

I'd be interested in people's thoughts here, whether anybody has chosen to
use either Riot.im or Slack for building an engaged community or know of
any who have.



Both this and the previous question come from the idea of EdLUG having
stated its purpose as being to "promote the use of Linux and Free Software
in the Edinburgh community." Let's get this goal back to front and centre!

+++

Thanks all, hopefully see everybody next month for Rhys's talk, and keep
those penguins running!

[1]: https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/event/8227
[2]: https://www.facebook.com/edinburgh.lug/
[3]: https://about.riot.im/
[4]: https://matrix.org/_matrix/consent


===
Tai Kedzierski
Linux Operations and Deployments Engineer


I use LibreOffice <https://www.libreoffice.org/> , a free,
Freedom-respecting replacement for MS Office

*Open Source Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price.*
https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
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