<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi all,</div><div><br></div><div>TL;DR</div><div><br></div><div>* July's talk will be about the state of open source smartphones, by Thomas Kluyver</div><div>* August , no meetup from me<br></div><div>* I'm looking for other venues. Again.</div><div>* We're on Meetup.com</div><div><br></div><div>+++</div><div>July Talk<br></div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/event/8611-wheres-my-open-smartphone" target="_blank">https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/event/8611-wheres-my-open-smartphone</a></div><div><br></div><div>For July 2019, Thomas Kluyver will be giving us a rundown of the state of open source smartphones!</div>
<br><div style="margin-left:40px">
When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, phones completed a journey from
appliances to pocket computers. Over three quarters of adults in the UK
own a smartphone. But it’s difficult to run free, open source
applications and operating systems on your phone, or to get a phone with
open hardware and firmware. How open are the big smartphone platforms?
What are the various projects aiming to make our phones more open? And
what are Purism doing with the $2 million they raised by crowdfunding
for the Librem 5?</div><div><br></div><div>Note ---- NEW VENUE</div><div><br></div><div>Special for this talk, we will be meeting at Akva - they have an accessible venue (wheelchairs via a lift) with a mezzanine area suited for talks, with a screen.<br></div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Akva%2C%20Edinburgh#map=19/55.94318/-3.20833">https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Akva%2C%20Edinburgh#map=19/55.94318/-3.20833</a></div><div><div><br></div><div>Apologies for short notice, hopefully this will remain feasible for most people.<br></div><div><br></div><div>+++</div><div>August<br></div><div><br></div><div>As per tradition/policy/habit, there is no "official" meetup in August.</div><div><br></div><div>I leave it open to whomever so wishes to organise something :-)<br></div><div><br></div><div>+++</div><div>Looking for new venues for the meetups</div><div><br></div><div>Since
we started doing talks again, our attendance numbers doubled/tripled
compared to our no-talks meetups. My conservative estimate that we'd be
fine with Royal Dick for a while was way off the mark. We've also had
display problems due to a weak projector, and inability to darken the
room properly.<br></div><div><br></div><div>So for July's talk we are meeting at Akva, which I was able to get for free ; however if a commercial customer books the space for money, they would be given immediate preference. I have been told that this is unliikely, but not impossible.<br></div><div><br></div><div>My aim is to have
somewhere for September that can roll for at least a couple of years. It may be that we run with one of the original ideas, which is to bounce until we settle... 2019 will definitely have
been the year of "searching for a home!"</div></div><div><br></div><div>+++</div><div>We're on Meetup.com</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://www.meetup.com/Edinburgh-Linux-User-Group-EdLUG/" target="_blank">https://www.meetup.com/Edinburgh-Linux-User-Group-EdLUG/</a></div><div><br></div><div>I bit the bullet and created an account on Meetup.com as an exploratory exercise. I hadn't planned on announcing it until after the summer when I would be happy everything was properly set up, but people have already been finding and joining it (including some names I definitely recognize!), so the cat's pretty much out of the bag...</div><div><br></div><div>The rationale is that whilst long-established techies in Edinburgh know about OpenTechCalendar, this only accounts for a small number of the demographic. I'll always have a preference for OTC as the first place to announce meetings, but I intend the Meetup.com page to be a way to eventually reach newcomers to the local tech scene, and even non-technical users.</div><div><div dir="ltr" class="m_178992989078552295m_-279408815322057569gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Keep herdin' them penguins!</div><div><br></div><div>Tai<br></div><div><br>===<br>Tai Kedzierski<br></div><div>Linux Operations and Deployments Engineer<br></div><br><div dir="ltr"><span></span><font size="1"><br>I use <a href="https://www.libreoffice.org/" target="_blank">LibreOffice</a> , a free, Freedom-respecting replacement for MS Office<br><br><i>Open Source Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price.</i><br>
<a href="https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software" target="_blank">https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software</a><br></font><font size="2"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>