This is a bit of an expanded rambling on the July event posting. As I stated in the event post and calendar entry, it’s July already and we are past halfway through the year. It’s time to be thinking of all the projects we wanted to start and realize it’s time to select the ones that we need to do vs. the ones it would be nice to do.

One of the topics I sent to the mailing list was the Cisco router item. Do you really want someone else to decide what you are allowed to visit? While the article shows that Cisco was a little less evil at the end, it does highlight the issues with closed source items (yes, I know I’m being a bit of a hippocrite using a MacBook). My little consumer router boxes don’t run factory firmware and neither do my production ones.

The fall open source festival I have been talking about is starting to shape up a bit and I am hoping we have the venue and date locked in this week. We have also renamed it to more accurately reflect the intent. We are going to call it “User Group Connect”, as the intent is to get as many local user groups as possible to attend. I’ve stated that ovSAGE will be represented, even if it’s just me.

I also want to redesign the ovSAGE logo. The current one has been in place for a very long time and other than altering it to a blue letters to match the web site, it’s really just a box with text in it. I’m open to suggestions, and I may have a few ideas by meeting time.

I’m going to have to find a proper venue for the meetings. The coffee shop is a useful location, but not conducive to giving a presentation or detailed talk. I’m not going to solicit Shopify yet, but they are open to hosting various user groups at their offices in the Market. It may be a bit of a pain to go downtown, but it may allow for a better venue. We’ve had meeting all over the city, so it’s not like we don’t have a precedent. I’d like to get back to having a presentation and a discussion so that we have a program that could attract some new members.