Topic: Choosing a secondary DNS server, now with data! Presenter: Aaron Joyner When: Thursday, 10th October 2013, 7pm (pizza from 6.45pm) Where: NC State Engineering Building II Room 1025, Centennial Campus Parking: The parking decks and Oval Drive street parking are free after 5pm Map: Google Maps Video: YouTube

Abstract: Are you responsible for a DNS domain, perhaps professionally, or a "vanity" domain for your personal email?  Have you given much thought to the DNS resolvers for that domain?  Every domain requires at least one DNS server, and everyone has probably heard that they should have a geographically disparate secondary server to hedge against catastrophic outages (network, building, etc).  Assuming you don’t have the luxury of a globally distributed set of datacenters, where should your secondary DNS server be hosted?  This talk will present one man's quest to answer that question, along with the data used to visualize and understand the available options.  There will also be a brief discussion of how that data was collected, and open source code (in Go, http://golang.org) to do it yourself.

Bio: Aaron S. Joyner is a Sr. Systems Engineer in the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) group at Google. He has been working as a SysAdmin for more than 15 years at companies such as Global Knowledge, Intrex.net, and MWG Biotech. When living in Raleigh, he was actively involved with the Triangle Linux Users Group, serving on the steering committee as SysAdmin in 2004-2005, and giving talks on DNS for NC*SA and TriLUG. Since joining Google in 2005, he has helped to maintain their internal DNS infrastructure and been primarily responsible for designing, implementing, and supporting Google's serial console systems.  For the past ~4 years, he has been leading a team of SREs responsible for supporting production authentication and machine management systems.

Sponsor: About Peak 10 Inc. Peak 10 provides reliable, tailored cloud computing, data center and other information technology (IT) infrastructure solutions and managed services, primarily for mid-market businesses. Customer-centric, responsive and cost-effective, Peak 10 solutions are designed to scale and adapt to customers' changing business needs, enabling them to increase agility, lower costs, improve performance and focus internal resources on their core competencies. Peak 10 holds the Cisco® Cloud Provider Certification with a Cisco Powered Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) designation. Peak 10 is SSAE 16 audited and helps companies meet the requirements of various regulatory compliance acts such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA/HITECH, PCI DSS and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA). For more information, visit www.peak10.com.

NCSU Host: A big thanks to the Office of Information Technology and NCSU for making the room available during Fall Break.

Topic: Open Source: the Nanotechnology of the Cloud Presenter: Michael Tiemann When: Thursday, 12th September 2013, 7pm Where: NC State Engineering Building III Room 2207, Centennial Campus Parking: The parking decks and Oval Drive street parking are free after 5pm Map: Google Maps Video: YouTube Slides: PDF

Michael Tiemann started the world's first open source software company, thereby placing the topic of open source into the field of economics.

Ignored for several years, open source has helped to rewrite the rules of economics, and has become an important subject among Nobel laureates. After reviewing 20+ years of Nobel Prize lectures in economics, Tiemann has synthesized a new perspective on the economics of cloud computing and the continued role that open source will play in the development of this new paradigm.

Topic: Patents and Linux in Context Presenter: Keith Bergelt When: Thursday, 8th August 2013, 7pm Where: NC State Engineering Building II Room 1025, Centennial Campus Parking: The parking decks and Oval Drive street parking are free after 5pm Map: Google Maps Video: YouTube

Keith will talk about intellectual property as a reality that shapes the context for open source software, particularly when overlaid against trends in technologies such as mobile and cloud computing, provide the history of Open Invention Network and its licensee community, and discuss Linux Defenders and other opportunities for community members to contribute proactively for the benefit of open source software.

Keith Bergelt is the chief executive officer of Open Invention Network® (OIN), the collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux. In this capacity he is directly responsible for enabling, influencing and defending the integrity of the Linux ecosystem. Central to the achievement of his goals is the acquisition and transfer of patent rights designed to permit members of the Linux ecosystem to operate free of the threat of assertion and litigation from those whose business models are antithetical to innovation and global economic growth in information technology and computing.

Topic: Lightning Talks Presenter: TriLUG Community When: Thursday, 11th July 2013, 7pm Where: NEW LOCATION! Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State Engineering Building II Room 1021, Centennial Campus (just across the street from Red Hat) Parking: The parking decks are free after 5pm, and street parking on Oval Drive. Map: Google Maps Video: YouTube RSVP: EventBrite (You don't actually need to bring a ticket to attend. Getting one just helps us prepare for refreshments so nobody goes without pizza!)

We'll be putting the July meeting in the hands of the TriLUG community by holding a series of Lightning Talks. Lightning talks are short talks of about 5-15 minutes long that give the audience a taste of a topic rather than going into the great detail associated with formal presentations. If you've been working on a cool project lately or learned something cool about technology, you are qualified to present something!

If you have an idea for a talk, please pitch it on the TriLUG mailing list and the community will help you cultivate it into a presentation you can be proud of. Prepend your subject line with "LT:" to make it easy to find (ie subject = "LT: Using Inkscape"). The Steering Committee will then collate a list of the topics and speakers from the mailing list posts. There isn't a set theme yet, but we expect a theme will emerge from the discussions in the next couple of weeks.

• Cracking Password Hashes (Slides) - Scott Miller
• Booting Linux on EFI using rEFInd - Matthew Frazier
• Electric Cars and Open Source Cars (Slides) - Jeremy Davis
• Network testing with iperf (Slides) - Bill Farrow
• Networking Tools (Slides) - William Chandler
• Flashback - a better way to backup -Alan Porter
• Open Source Ecological Solutions - Moustapha Barry
• Ceph storage platform (Slides) - Jack Hill

Topic: Open Learning in the Classroom and Online Presenter: Cathy Davidson When: Thursday, 13th June 2013, 7pm Where: NOTE! NEW LOCATION! Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State Engineering Building II, Centennial Campus (just across the street from Red Hat) Parking: The parking decks are free after 5pm, and street parking on Oval Drive. Map: Google Maps Video: G+ Hangout Live and on YouTube [live stream and then archived on youtube] RSVP: EventBrite (You don't actually need to bring a ticket to attend. Getting one just helps us prepare for refreshments so nobody goes without pizza!)

We are extremely fortunate to have Cathy Davidson speaking June 13th at TriLUG! Make sure you do not miss this rare opportunity! Cathy Davidson is an extraordinary individual and a brilliant minded speaker, who is a highly influential player in the world of open education in the universities. She is the first educator to serve on the six-person Board of Directors of the Mozilla Foundation! She'll include in her talk, discussion of her two current peer-taught, peer-evaluated classes and her upcoming work to prepare for a Coursera MOOC entitled "The History and Future of Higher Education". Make sure your schedule allows for you to attend this special event. Also, spread the word to your fellow digerati and invite them to attend.

Please note that this meeting will be held at a new venue, so there will be some shifts in the usual schedule. NCSU does not permit food in its classrooms, so we are going to begin the meeting with a reception/networking over our usual pizza in the atrium of Engineering Building 2. At about 7:30 we'll move to 1021 to begin businesss, community announcements, and the presentation.

About CATHY N. DAVIDSON

Cathy Davidson teaches at Duke University, where she co-directs the Ph.D. Lab in Digital Knowledge and holds two distinguished chairs (Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies). She served as Duke’s first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and helped to create over seventy programs including the Program in Information Science + Information Studies and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience as well as the University Scholars Program (in partnership with and supported by Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates) . She is a co-founder of the global learning network HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Technology, and Science Alliance and Collaboratory), which administers the annual $2 million HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions. Her more than twenty books include Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji, Revolution and the Word, and The Future of Thinking (with David Theo Goldberg). Her latest book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking, 2011) was named a "top 10 science book" of the year by Publisher's Weekly and has been the occasion for over eighty invited lectures in the U.S. and internationally, including in Canada, Australia, the UK, Hong Kong, and Thailand. A frequent speaker and consultant on institutional change at universities, corporations, and non-profits around the world, she writes for Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, Times Higher Ed, and many other publications in the U.S. and abroad. In July 2012 she was named the first educator on the six-person Board of Directors of the Mozilla Foundation. She was recently appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Humanities and received the 2012 Educator of the Year Award (with HASTAC cofounder David Theo Goldberg) for "Visionary Contribution to Science and Technology in Education."

Article I: Name and Purpose

Section 1: Name

The organization shall hereinafter be referred to as “TriLUG”.

Section 2: Purpose

The primary purpose of TriLUG is to share and advance Linux and other Free (as in Freedom) and Open Source Software, hardware, and practices through education, outreach, and community ­building in the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) region of North Carolina.

Article II: Membership

Section 1: Qualification

Any natural person (corporations are specifically excluded) who attends a meeting in­ person qualifies for membership.

Section 2: Joining

Membership forms may be obtained from the Steering Committee. A prospective member must fill out a membership form, submit it to the Steering Committee, and wait to be notified that their membership is active.

Section 3: Voting Rights

Current members that are in the membership database may vote on TriLUG orders of business.

Section 4: Records

Personally identifying information (PII) is gathered for the purpose of membership application, including but not limited to full name, email address, and a mailing address. Collected information will only be used to conduct TriLUG business. Any agents of TriLUG, whether volunteers or contracted organizations, will be bound to use this information only for TriLUG business. Membership records will never be sold, rented, or given away.

Aggregate information about the membership is not considered confidential if, in the good faith opinion of the Steering Committee, it cannot be used to reveal PII.

TriLUG does not take responsibility for information that a member chooses to disclose during their participation in TriLUG events and services.

Section 5: Cards

Each member is entitled to receive an official membership card.

Section 6: Privileges

TriLUG makes certain services available to the membership, such as a Linux shell account and an email address, as resources allow. Services are provided for educational benefit and are free of cost. Services come with no warranties or guarantees of suitability for any purpose.

TriLUG reserves the right to discontinue services at any time.

Section 7: Resignation

Any member may resign from the organization by sending a signed request to the Steering Committee.

Section 8: Deactivation

Membership may be deactivated due to expired contact information. Documentation of attempts to reach the member is required. Membership shall be reactivated upon receipt of current contact information from the member.

Section 9: Revocation

Membership may be revoked by a vote of the Steering Committee due to serious violation of policies or obstruction of the group’s operations. Any membership revocation must be communicated to the general membership within thirty days.

Section 10: Appeal of Revocation

Following revocation of membership, if the former member presents a petition for reinstatement signed by at least fifteen current members, there shall be a vote by the membership to either uphold the revocation or reinstate membership. The vote must occur at a general meeting within sixty days of the request.

Article III: Steering Committee

Section 1: Definition

A committee of five people will be responsible for the operation of the organization, and will be known as the Steering Committee (SC).

Section 2: Qualification

Any member who is in the membership database and currently resides in the state of North Carolina may be elected to the Steering Committee.

Section 3: Candidacy

The Steering Committee shall send a call for nominations for candidacy not more than sixty nor fewer than ten days before elections take place. Members may declare their candidacy by either announcing their intent to run via the mailing list at least 24 hours in advance of the election, or by attending the election in person and stating their intent to run.

Section 4: Election

The membership will vote by secret ballot, each member selecting up to five candidates. All candidates as determined in Section 3 shall be present on the ballot. The five candidates with the most votes shall become the new Steering Committee. After the elections, the new officers along with the full ballot will be communicated to the membership via the mailing list.

Section 5: Term

Members of the Steering Committee serve for a term of one year. Members wishing to remain on the Steering Committee may be re­elected.

Section 6: Procedure for Removal

An individual may be removed from office by a two­thirds vote of the members present at a general meeting.

Section 7: Vacancies

Should a member of the Steering Committee vacate their office (by removal, relocation outside the state of North Carolina, resignation or death), the membership will vote in a new officer to serve out the remainder of the term.

Section 8: Meetings

The Steering Committee meets as its officers see fit. All Steering Committee members should be present for all meetings. The Chair or the Vice Chair presides at these meetings.

Section 9: Compensation

Steering Committee members shall receive no compensation except for reimbursement for expenses incurred on behalf of the organization.

Section 10: Voting

A majority of current Steering Committee members must vote affirmatively in order for a motion to pass, unless otherwise stated in these bylaws.

Article IV: Officers

Section 1: Appointment

At the first meeting of a new Steering Committee, members of the committee appoint each other to offices by majority vote.

Section 2: Chair

The Chair is responsible for setting the agenda and running the meetings.

Section 3: Vice Chair

The Vice Chair will assume the responsibilities of the Chair when the Chair is unavailable.

Section 4: Treasurer

The Treasurer receives and disburses money at the direction of the Steering Committee and is accountable for the budget. The Treasurer and the Chair are accountable for tax filing as required by federal, state, and local agencies; however, the Treasurer is responsible for acquiring all the necessary forms and working with a certified public accountant, if necessary to file said forms.

Section 5: Sysadmin

The Sysadmin is responsible for maintaining the operation of the TriLUG computer services including but not limited to the mailing lists.

Section 6: Public Relations

The Public Relations Officer is responsible for marketing and promoting the organisation and its events to the public, for answering questions from reporters and officials, and for providing summaries to the other officers about any ongoing public relations issue, such as public controversy or lawsuits.

Article V: Meetings

Section 1: Election

A meeting must occur each May to elect a new Steering Committee.

Section 2: Annual Report

The Steering Committee will designate one meeting per fiscal year as the "Annual Membership Meeting" at which a financial report and other business of importance to the membership will be presented. Each Annual Membership Meeting must occur within fifteen months of the previous Annual Membership Meeting.

Section 3: General

General meetings occur several times a year, as the members see fit.

Section 4: Voting

Any vote by the membership shall occur by secret ballot. Votes must be cast in­-person at a meeting that occurs within the Triangle area of North Carolina.

Section 5: Notice

Any motion that will be voted upon by the membership must be announced to the membership no more than sixty nor fewer than ten days in advance of the meeting at whiching voting is to occur.

Article VI: Miscellaneous

Section 1: Amending the By-Laws

These by­laws may be amended by a vote of the members present at a general meeting. An amendment is adopted if two­-thirds of the members present vote in favor of adoption.

Section 2: Conflict of Interest Policy

TriLUG shall adopt a conflict of interest policy, the purpose of which is to protect TriLUG’s interest when it is contemplating entering into a transaction or arrangement that might benefit the private interest of an officer or director or might result in a possible excess benefit transaction. The policy must be made available to members through the website, and any change to the policy must be announced to members within ten days.

Section 3: Anti-harassment

The Steering Committee shall maintain and enforce an anti-harassment policy.

In order to provide a space that is inclusive of all people interested in Linux and other Free and Open Source software, TriLUG is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, country of origin, or age. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Furthermore, sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any TriLUG-sponsored event or service. Participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from talks, events, mailing lists, IRC channel or other services at the discretion of the Steering Committee or its designate.

The complete anti ­harassment policy shall be made publicly available and can be found at:

http://trilug.org/anti-harassment

Published Policies

Proposed By-Laws

In order to provide a space that is inclusive of all people interested in Linux and other Free and Open Source software, TriLUG is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, country of origin, or age. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Furthermore, sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any TriLUG-sponsored event or service. Participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from talks, events, mailing lists, IRC channel or other services at the discretion of the Steering Committee or its designate. Our complete anti-harassment policy can be found at:

http://trilug.org/anti-harassment

The Steering Committee Elections will be held at the TriLUG May meeting.

Nominations are now open, please help your local Linux community by nominating yourself or some unsuspecting TriLUG member. There are five hotly contested positions on the Steering Committee, and you could be one of them. Contenders will be able to give a brief stump speech at the May meeting to drum up support, and then we vote.

To vote or serve on the committee, you will need to be a TriLUG "member". If you filled out a membership form at the April meeting or before, your covered. If you have lost your card, don't worry, we have a mysql database to look you up. Voting will be performed by paper ballot during the May meeting, and you must be present to vote.

The Steering Committee is responsible for planning meetings, finding speakers, ordering pizza, paying bills. This year they will need to secure a new meeting location, file the 501(c)3 paperwork, and Get Stuff Done™.

This post from a couple of years ago has a nice list of things to do: http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/trilug/Week-of-Mon-20110425/063337.html