We had a small group tonight. When I say small I mean really small. All of three people.

We had the normal trivia exchange and then got to a more serious topic - what kind of skill set do you need to be a sysadmin? This could be a topic for a future meeting. Perhaps some kind of skills assessment from everyone? I think I’ll wait and see who comments/brings it up again.

It’s been a little hectic around here lately, new organizations to join, conferences to attend, lawns to mow and course material to prepare. That’s in addition to my day job. As a result (and due to running out of disc space), it’s taken some time to get at the audio from the conference.

This is the first one I have converted - the keynote address. Others will follow this week. I’m also working on the videos, but that takes a lot longer.

Well, it can be. Everyone knows the love affair I’ve been having with my macbook, so it’s no surprise that I used it to create a podcast of the keynote from BSDCan 2007. If anyone wants to listen, it’s at my other blog site. Since it’s a streamable/downloadable item, the bandwidth usage may get high and since they provide free bandwidth, why not use theirs?

I have a lot more to produce, so I think I’ll be automating the production a bit and see what happens. At worst, I have to do it manually but if it works, they could conceivably all be created over night. That’s a task for a different day though.

We have a change of venue this month. Brenda is off to Scotland for a vacation, so we don’t have a sponsor at Fidus. I’ll see what I can come up with, but we can always go to a Tim Horton location - there will be coffee :)

Topics:

• Bruce may want to talk about his Postfix adventures.
• I’ll have a podcast or two from BSDCan 2007 available.
• I’ll probably want to talk about the LPI course Andrea and I are giving at the OTI.
• I’ve joined the Ottawa chapter of the Disaster Recovery Information Exchange and that’s given me some serious food for thought. I’ll see if I can dig up some of the info from the annual conference that was held May 31.
• We can talk about a group education effort - we’ll start borrowing the format from other groups and give a short talk and discussion. Everyone should pick a topic that they want to learn about or want to present on. I know we have a lot of expertise in may areas in the group and we should start using it.

This may be the first time any of you see of this topic. If it is successful, we’ll be offering it again in the future.

First some background. With a little urging from Tim Inkpen (who has gotten involved with the OTI), Andrea Vieira and I will be presenting a rapid get up to speed course for people who wish to get their LPIC-Level 1 certification. The initial offering starts June 18^th and yesterday (I was over there to attend a session on how to bid on government contracts) there was 1 seat available in a class of 25. If anyone is interested, you should try to sign up right away.