[PLUG-ANNOUNCE] PLUG February 2nd In-Person Meeting Soft Announcement

[Michael Dexter]

Tap tap... is this thing on?

Hello everyone.

I have confirmed the venue in Hillsdale and am awaiting final speaker 
confirmation. I hope to post all details shortly.

Topic: Zoneminder from an extremely-knowledgeable local presenter


Some facts, policies, and requests:

I would appreciate a person or two to arrive 30 minutes in advance to 
help with chairs.

The venue officially wants payment but, full disclosure, supposedly PLUG 
has unclaimed donations with the State of Oregon. I have started the 
paperwork to find out more about this. Regardless of what the venue 
eventually costs, I will pass round a hat for donations for the center 
as I am very involved with it and trust me, things like new carpet would 
be nice. Every bit helps.

We CAN have food and beverages there if that is of interest to people. 
There are table available but I do not think we want to drag them out.

There is a Hillsdale McMenamins and food cards at the nearby high school 
that might still be open but how about "bring something if you like, 
clean it up if you spill it".

As if those topics are not controversial enough, let's talk masks.

My last two in-person tech conferences and two upcoming ones have strict 
masking and testing policies. They also kindly provide both quality 
masks and tests. We all want COVID-19 to be over and how about we 
continue to take steps toward that goal.

Until further notice, I would like to enforce a mask policy for everyone 
but the active speaker, following the example of my recent conferences. 
I will bring a few sealed masks for those who need them and I am doing 
my best to have a streaming option for those who cannot risk any 
exposure or profoundly object to the mask policy.


That all said, I have begun updating the web site and will keep filling 
in the various little bits that need to take place behind the scenes.

Please check the site to see if I missed any of the softPLUG meetings in 
the Past Meeting Topics. Speaking of the site... it's dated as heck. I 
prefer keep it static but I will not rule out using a site generator or 
a SUPER modular HTML5 template. I am looking or one for another project 
but I am open to suggestions of a strategy that can last another decade 
or so.

All the best,

Michael Dexter
PLUG Volunteer