[volunteers] March Speakers?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Kevin Dankwardt (kevin.dankwardt at gmail.com):

> Speakers that are interested:

If you can get Dietrich and Paithankar to _both_ schedule for 2017
dates, IMO you should take that and count yourself lucky.  You will find
(IMO) that having a line-up a few months out makes everything easier.  

In my experience, getting a speaker to commit to a date _under_ two
weeks away is difficult indeed.  Oddly, so is getting them to commit
_more_ than two months away.

If possible, it's extremely valuable to store up a few speaker/topic
possibilities 'in your pocket' to pull out as necessary to fill openings
on short notice, either because you just couldn't find anyone or a
speaker cancelled.  Those are like gold (especially because of the 
'under two weeks' problem mentioned above).

I'll add notes about Dietrich and Paithankar's possible future talks to
our TBA page, http://www.svlug.org/tba.php , which is linked from the
meetings page .

And I want to talk about that page, because its whole purpose for
existence is to serve you and other planners.  If it's not, I need to
know.


What's the deal with our TBA page 
---------------------------------

I noticed over time that there was a near-total disconnect between
planners and people coming up with speaker/topic ideas.  The latter
would _only_ ever post their ideas to Volunteers, or the main mailing
list, or to webmaster at svlug.org (which gets them forwarded to
Volunteers).  Later, planners would try to find meeting ideas but
essentially never look in mailing list archives.  So, communication
failed.

The idea of tba.php is to collect in _one_ place all credible meeting
ideas that haven't yet been used.  Also at the bottom of the page are
suggestions of specific other places to look for speakers/topics.

_Probably_, some of tba.php's entries should be erased.   Some of that I
can figure out, others require feedback from planners (e.g., you).

For example, the page has several offered topics from Jesse Monroy, but
he's now (usually) in West Texas (where he now lives), and the
likelihood of his giving those talks is now low.  I should _probably_ 
just remove those -- or at least edit them to say these are ideas some
other speaker would need to run with, as Jesse's almost never around.

I've just checked tba.php against http://www.svlug.org/prevmeet.php,
looking for already-used ideas.  

o  Speaker = 'Owen DeLong', topic = 'Migrating applications from IPv4 to 
   IPv6' is one we used in May 2010, so I'll remove that (in a few minutes).

o  Speaker = "Robert Harker', topic = 'Various sysadmin topics' matches our 
   Dec, 2015 talk about 'Using Jenkins to Automate Building, Testing, and 
   Deployment of New Code', but I'll leave the item present because Robert's 
   a good prospect for more sysadmin talks.  

o  Speaker = 'Kyle Rankin', topic = 'Introduction to Forensics, other topics' 
   matches his three talks for us in 2005, 2008, and 2009 --- but again 
   Rankin's an excellent speaker if/when available.

o  Aniruddh Mulay's idea of 'someone from Hadoop' matches the Nov. 2011
   Tomer Shiran presentation about 'MapR - the next-generation Hadoop
   distribution that integrates with Linux', but I figure there's room 
   for another Hadoop talk.

o  Speaker = 'Cricket Liu', topic = 'As a guess: DNS and BIND?' matches 
   (as mentioned) an August 2007 talk about 'Securing Internet Name Servers', 
   but he's an absolutely top speaker on any DNS topic, so I'm keeping that.

o  Speaker = 'TBA', topic = 'The MKitTM Mobile Linux Development Kit' 
   is no longer possible as stated because that that toolkit is no
   longer on the market.  _But_ sponsoring firm Unicon Systems 
   is still around (https://www.unicon.net/) and might have other 
   topics -- so I'll edit the entry to say so.


So, looks like _one_ 'TBA' idea to remove, the Owen DeLong one.
(Good.  I've been meaning to do that runthrough for a long time.)

Owen's talk aside, there are _27_ entries on the TBA page!

I _hope_ those would be very useful in lining up talks.  If it's not,
please suggest anything that might make it more useful.

One limitation is inherent in it being a public Web page;  We're obliged
to assume that potential speakers' personal contact information (e-mail
and telephone numbers) may be sensitive.  So, when I created that entry
for Cricket Liu, I could not include 'And here's a foolproof way to 
reach Cricket...,'  (Cannot recall whether I had that data; the point is
we must be careful about publishing it if we do.)

If you'd like to contact someone on tba.php _or_ (fabulous idea) a prior
speaker on http://www.svlug.org/prevmeet.php), ask around.  Someone here
might know or be able to find out.


The last thing to be aware of, about tba.php, is that it grew downwards, 
so basically it's oldest idea to newest.  Arguably, the order is a
blunder.  (I _could_ invert it.)  Also, the later (lower) entries 
are probably a lot more information-rich than the earlier (higher) ones,
because I learned.  E.g., the later ones usually include a link to the
mailing list post that made the suggestion.  (I see that many of those
got broken when I rebuilt the archive at some point, but think I can 
fix those.)

Please see if you can use 
http://www.svlug.org/tba.php and
http://www.svlug.org/prevmeet.php as sources for new topics/speakers.
They're there to help.

Please let me know if I can improve them.


And let me know if items need removal from tba.php because, e.g., the
speaker died or moved to West Texas, or it's a product idea for 
something no longer extant or no longer relevant.