The Free Software and Linux Club holds elections each spring for the coming school year's officer's. Other officer positions are opened as the need arises and filled by a vote of the elected officers.

The elected positions include:

Officer Notes

Free Software and Linux Club officer Notes

Some notes on officer responsibilities and ideas for improving your effectiveness as an FSLC officer shared by past officers.

General

Being a good officer in FSLC is not an easy thing. Many times I have wondered if I have accomplished anything or been of any use at all. If you find yourself in question, calm down, take a step back and work the problem over. Most of the time you will be able to come up with some solution that will take care of the majority. Listen to everyones opinions whether you agree with them or not. Remember that you were elected to serve them and not your own personal thoughts.

We try to be somewhat diverse, and in so doing we will have minor differences in opinion regarding the major items. And sometimes we will have major differences in the minor items. All of these differences are not really that important, so don't get to caught up in them.

Set goals early and often and make sure that other officers are aware of them. Making other officers aware of them will make you more accountable and will also give other officers an idea of what your doing for the club. Set goals together as officers, so that you have input from the other officers. Also this will help all officers to align their goals in the same direction, and perhaps ones goals will help another achieve their goals.

Try and follow through on everything that you say you will do. If something comes up don't purposefully forget about it. Communicate with other officers and club members so that they can fill in for whatever you were doing.

Planning meetings ahead of time has been a very beneficial way of doing things. If you think that you can come up with a million ideas of what to have done in meetings just try to come up with 10. Its tough. Have brain storming sessions with other officers and for heaven sakes don't be afraid to go to the club members and ask for meeting ideas. After all they are the ones that are going to end up listening to them.

Don't be afraid to challenge the status quo. If meeting attendance is very low and people don't like the meetings then propose something else to take the place of a meeting. For example this year we are doing a programming contest. Hands on events seem to excite people a little more.

Recognize the bad things about the club and put together solutions. Becoming highly involved with anything may blind you to problems that are occurring within that effort. Talk with people who come to meetings and ask them questions about the club. This can be a good way to "stumble" onto problems.

Utilize the mailing lists and make sure that you are participating in the IRC channels. You must be in constant communication with other club members to keep track of whats going on.

Assign tasks to club members to take the burden off of officers. When assigning tasks make sure to do so by asking a polite way so that the person understands that it isn't a requirement to be a member, but will really help the club out. This is something that will give club members a chance to participate and feel like they are helping while at the same time take a burden off of officers and other club members (Think distributed load).

One of the most important things I think you can do is to figure out how to motivate other officers. I don't have a solution to this problem and have spent many hours thinking on it. Because the club is based completely on volunteer work you can not require that anyone person do a certain task. I usually find myself with a very long list of things that I would like FSLC to accomplish but know that I can not do any one of them by myself. Try whatever you can think of until you find something that works. I've found that rewards don't do much and you can't use any form of a punishment system. Reminding people that they were elected doesn't seem to work either. Do your best and understand that if you are having this problem its not new and you aren't the first to be frustrated with it. That alone is worth a little relief.

Duties

President

CSCO

We are sponsored by ASUSU through CSCO. Every year(preferably by the end of spring semester) we need to turn in a new form and a constitution. We do this through the ASUSU office on the third floor. CSCO sponsorship allows us to reserve rooms and advertise on campus. There are some expectation of CSCO clubs. These can be found in the booklet they will give you when you register. These rules may vary from year to year so make sure you get a new rulebook. This rule book will also tell you what methods of advertisements are available. There is a CSCO meeting every month you are supposed to attend. They will send out an email reminding you of each meeting.

Adviser

Steve Allan is our adviser. He will help you reserve rooms, that need to be reserved through campus scheduling(most rooms) or the computer science department(SER 005 Basement of ESLC).Steve is the one to go to when you want to get something done through the university. Don't try and go independently to people at the University to get things most of the time they will ignore you or give you bad information. Use Steve, he is a gateway to getting things done at USU. You want to keep checking with him on things that he has agreed to do.

Meetings

Have a social event at least once a semester. Even geeks get tired of hearing about technical things and want to relax sometimes. A good social event will give new people a chance to interface with the club and will also give you the officers a chance to network with (hopefully) new members.

Encourage presenters to be prepared for meetings. Mention to them at least twice that they should have their slides/presentation done before the meeting starts and that some sort of a visual presentation is needed. One of the noticeable things about FSLC is the lack of time and effort that is put into presentations (I have had people comment on this). This may seem like overkill, and perhaps make you think that you are pestering the presenter. However, when done with tact, it will help your volunteer to put on a more prepared presentation. It will also keep communication lines open so that you'll know in advance if something comes up and they have to cancel.

It's important to have consistent and good meetings. This is really the only way to have them. We've tried other ways, and they don't seem to have as good of results. It is HIGHLY recommend that you preplan the meetings!

Room

We currently reserve room engr 104 from through campus scheduling. To do this each semester you contact Steve Allan with all days and hours that we want the room for that semester. You should also have him contact campus police. It would be good if we could make a map (Of where its located) to put on our website and also if we could make use of the camera within the room.

T-shirts

Depending on who you talk to T-shirts do and don't have to be approved through the university. The university has a Marketing/PR department that approves things that use the official university logo and other university trademarks. I was able to contact this department by speaking with an individual that worked in the office on the 3rd floor of the TSC. The individual gave me the phone # and name of a person in the Marketing department who I then contacted. That person told me that because we were doing the project on a small scale we wouldn't need to worry about getting signed off (There are official sign off sheets for things like this). Since then CSCO has told us that we must get the university to sign off on any shirts that use the USU logo or any other official USU trademark. At this point in time we have chosen to follow the Marketing/PR department and ignore CSCO on this issue. If you follow this route PLEASE, PLEASE write down the name of the person who told you that it was okay, the number you reached them at, any other info about the situation. Keep the info in a safe place in case there are any disputes or problems. This way you can reference the person who gave you permission and keep the club from getting the wrath of the university. Also don't use this wording as instruction. Go talk to CSCO and the people on the 3rd floor of the TSC. DON'T assume that because we were able to get away without getting approval this year that you can do the same next year.

Workshops

We have done workshops on Saturday to cover topics more in depth. We usually ask for a ten dollar donation for workshops. EL235b, basement of ESLC and SER005 have all been used for workshops. Workshops are a very important way to get donations for the club. If your sitting around trying to figure out how your going to pay for your next activity then you probably need to plan a workshop. Workshops should be well thought out and be much more involved then regular meetings. They should be geared toward the 'how' side of things versus the 'this' and 'why' side of things. Example workshops that I've seen are Perl, Python, CVS, and we also discussed doing one on Open Office. A good PR effort is needed to have a workshop be considered successful. Also, if possible try and coordinate your meeting topics with upcoming workshops.

CS Linux Labs

We maintain the Linux Lab in room OM428 and SER005. Just make sure they are running smooth and up to date. See the Lab Admin section for more details.

Admin Meetings

Face to face admin(or officer) meetings are very useful. A lot of admins tend to put of email. You can get a lot more feed back from face to face meetings. Make sure that whenever there is an admin meeting that someone is taking notes on everything that is discussed and decided and that those notes get posted to the admin mailing list so that they can be referenced and reviewed by all the officers.

Forum

If you want to schedule the TSC for the forum DO IT NOW. In the past we have also used the Eccles Conference Center. The forum has consisted of a keynote speaker and several one hours speakers throughout the day as well as various demo and free software based companies. We have had two successful forums up until now (1/22/04)based on the opinions I've heard from the officers in place during those forums it is better to place the forum in the TSC vs placing the forum in the Eccles Conference Center. This is mostly for getting walk-by traffic interested in the Forum. This comes at a price as scheduling the TSC is like shooting a football into a hockey goal (With a goalie in place). It can't get much worse then that. If a date for the forum was not set by previous officers set it now.

Food

VP

Other LUGs

FSLC at this point has very few outside contacts with other organizations and groups. This is an area that FSLC can improve in quite a bit. I recommend that the whoever is VP either delegate or themselves sign up to other LUG mailing lists within the geographical area. Keep track of other LUG events so that you can (1) get ideas for meeting topics and(2) cross promote other LUG events. I also recommend that you get into contact with officers/leaders of other LUGS and see what kind of collaboration can be brought together. This will mostly depend on the amount of time that you have. You will most likely be swamped as all of the officers are this year and this is one area that you may bend to time. Other areas should be focused on before you take care of this. There has/was a lot of talk about communicating with he LUG located in the souther half of Idaho. This would be good place to start. Also note this is a good way to get speakers for the Forum.

Generally, the SLLUG questions why we have the forum at USU, and suggests SLC. The PLUG also wonders why it can't be closer to them, and so we generally don't get a whole lot of support from them. As for contacts, there are several fslc members who are> active in at least theses two groups.

There is also a LDSOSS list

Other Clubs/Organizations at USU

Generally speaking most other clubs and organizations at USU don't share or hold any similar views to FSLC. This doesn't mean that there can't be collaboration or communication. Do your best to hold personal view points and biases out of the clubs eyes especially towards other organizations on campus. If things like this occur it won't only reflect on you personally but also on the club.This year an effort was made to get some join efforts made between the computer related clubs. The clubs contacted and working together at this point are: CS ACM, BIS ACM, ACMW and of course FSLC.. A mailing list was created that is hosted on FSLC. The mailing list is clubefforts@fslc.usu.edu. It would be smart to limit the amount of people who can post to this list. Currently it is one to two officers from each club. If the list were to include all officers I think that it would be too big to actually facilitate anything getting done. As it stands now there is a good number of people on the list and each knows the inner working of each of the individual clubs. Every effort should be made to keep this alliance going. We have already had benefits from this where members of other clubs can come to our events and count it for professors that require students to go to activities. Some way of documenting what is decided and how things are setup would be good for this. Some effort should also be made to transition new officers into their roles related to this joint effort.

Secretary

Should register with CSCO by the end of the school year for the next school year.

Post each event on the calendar as soon as it is set.

Send emails about the event at least one full business day before the event.

We recommend scheduling things a month in advance if possible.

Steve Allen has emailed the CS undergrad list when we have asked him to. When requesting that he posts and event to the list he has asked that we do it my sending him and email, make sure you label the email as special so he doesn't delete it ie -- DO NOT DELETE --. This should be coordinated with the PR Officer.

Public Relations

Get a CSCO manual. It will tell you what you can do to promote the Club.

There is a special recruiting day on the quad for incoming freshmen the Friday before school starts. Contact the ASUSU office to reserve a booth.

Day on the Quad is the first week of school. Talk to ASUSU to reserve a booth.(Who ever is listed as the contact with ASUSU will get an email)

A-Day is towards the end of the school year. Again there should be an email.

We usually can not get power for any of these last three events. It is helpful to have something to give away at these events. Weather it be cd's or just candy. ASUSU encourages people of have games at these events. Something big and visible would be best. A dunking booth with a CS professor has been mentioned. I would prefer something that promotes Free Software rather than something that attacks MS.

Talk to the VP about coordinating recruitment in the CS classes with CS-ACM. Promoting in classes should be taken seriously. Get it done at the beginning of the semester. Split up the people who will be visiting each class. Make assignments and be firm about making sure the work gets done. Also have a document written up (bulleted) with a clear set thing that each person needs to get across to the class they are visiting. This way FSLC comes across with a unified message.

Knoppix cd's are always popular. GNUWinCd's and OpenCD's are good as well.

The importance of PR can not be stressed enough. FSLC is an unknown entity even among CS students. I believe that meeting attendance would be much higher if only people knew. There are many things that can be done as far as PR is concerned, a few are: Aggie TV, the Statesman, Visiting classes, Flyers throughout buildings (get permission first), professors. There are plenty of others, don't be afraid to get FSLC's name out there.

When we do go to classes we tend to focus on mainly CS people. We have lots of backgrounds in our membership. Some are English majors, some are engineering or chemistry students, and some were even from El-Ed. As long as we're doing this, don't limit it to only the technical fields.We need more art majors involved. (look at how good we draw if you need a reason) Talking to larger classes such as speech will give a good cross section since so many majors are represented in such a class.

ASUSU hosts a street painting day. FSLC has penguin paint colors. Contact the old PR office to find out where they are. Bring several small brushes. Using a grid to paint the image worked well.

You can get special paint brushes(they call them markers) from the ASUSU office and butcher paper from the design room(sign in at the ASUSU office). This butcher paper can be used for the wire or to cover the a-frames.

The CS department has a allowed us to post signs in specific locations on the floor in the past. These places include the door you see when you come around the corner from the elevators. The Linux lab door and on occasion the ACM door.

The club has created business cards and distributed them to members to be used for promoting the club.

Steve Allen has emailed the CS undergrad list when we have asked him to. When requesting that he posts and event to the list he has asked that we do it my sending him and email, make sure you label the email as special so he doesn't delete it ie -- DO NOT DELETE --. This should be coordianted with the secratary.

Installfest Coordinator

Debian, Mandrake, Redhat, Suse, and Fedora are all popular.

The club owns three hubs(one currently on lone to the ACM) and a bunch of cables.

Promoting install fests should be done with a joint effort of both the PR person and the install fest coordinator. As time is usually hard to come by it would be ideal if the install fest coordinator took some of the promoting efforts on for install fests.

Web Master

Content is very important on any website. If possible make sure that the front page of the website is up-to-date with the most current information. People have liked the calendar that we have had on our website and it has served us well. Also, it would be nice if the webmaster could see who was presenting a head of schedule and get the presentation on the website prior to the actual meeting. This way people who are at the meeting with laptops and such can view the presentations without having to squint at the overhead display.

Sys Admin

Email Lists

There are several email lists:

Be ready to deal with some users who don't seem to understand how to unsubscribe from any of the mailing lists.

Make people aware of any down time ahead of schedule. You can do this with email to the mailing lists,a topic change in #linux on the IRC server, and a post to the calendar on the website.

COTD Admin

Send semi-random man pages if you don't have any commands that have been sent to you.

Lab Admin

Currently using system imager to keep machines up to date. Image is stored on cslinux.cs.usu.edu. The machines reimage the home directory every night from a local directory.

FSLCWiki: Elections (last edited 2008-02-06 00:56:33 by 75-162-129-203)