Minutes - 10 May 2003

Sat 10 May Meeting Minutes

Compsoc Exec Minutes

10 May 2003

Present

Compsoc and DCS

Meeting with Mike Joy

On Thursday, Phil and Sadiq met Mike Joy to discuss future ideas that involve the CS department. The idea of providing Linux desktop sessions over VNC has been shelved for now (mainly due to hardware requirements). We have also been offered some space to host new servers if we obtain some.

First year social

Phil and Sadiq are to meet with Leslie Goldberg to discuss a potential social event for the first years at the start of the new term.

Publicity

We should be able to get mentioned in the appropriate CS lectures.

Sponsorship

Sadiq spoke to the person at the Union related to sponsorship, and compiled a list of potential sponsors to approach.

Perl tutorials

First tutorial happened, there will either be another one or two tutorials, depending on demand.

Servers

Molotov will have various services upgraded on Monday morning at 3am. Richard will mail the members beforehand to ask that any services running on Molotov may be disrupted during this time and to inform him of any services they run that will need restarting.
We have also budgeted for upgrades to Insomnia, with the old parts from there going into Molotov and the old parts from Molotov being appropriated for other uses (possibly for the new LAN server).

Cat5

The Union have given us permission to make the Cat5 sales official, so it can be advertised more prominently. A followup to this service to our members is to look into the feasibility of selling network cards, especially since Lazer-Lizard are charging significantly more than the value of the cards they sell.

LANs

We need the exact power ratings for each room and the location of the 13A sockets. The BFL will be 76 hours (including the pre-LAN), the longest LAN held by Compsoc (two more hours than the previous BFL). Given the length, it was recommended that we obtain a Macro card and use it to purchase bulk amounts of food and drink. Due to one of the rooms being in use at the desired start of the LAN, there will be a pre-LAN, starting on Monday at 5pm. The LAN will probably feature a DHCP server (and DNS).

LUG

In order to raise the profile of the LUG, other activities to do were brainstormed. One idea was to do a tutorial/workshop on how to setup a gateway machine to share the internet connection in a house, which can tie into the installfest. The Association for Free Software is holding a conference in Birmingham next week, so it might be worth organising a trip down there as part of the LUG.

BBQ

The site needs booking, and the equipment apparently didn’t last the winter.

Guest Lecture

About 80 people turned up. Phil has mailed the BBC about two of the topics they do lectures on (“Walking with Dinosaurs” and “How Linux is used at the BBC”). Other possibilities include Peter Cochrane (from The Telegraph) and Kevin Warwick. It was decided that the best time to hold more talks would be next term.

Socials

The Matrix: Reloaded is released in this country on May 23rd. It was recommended that we organise a visit to the cinema about a week afterwards to avoid (some of) the rush.

Activity day

The working group of Phil, Euan and Christian will meet next Thursday to discuss it.