NYC LOCAL: Thursday 18 September 2008 UNIGROUP: Evan Prodromou on the Laconica Project, micro-blogging, and the XMPP protocol

[secretary]

<blockquote
  what="official UNIGROUP announcement"
  note="This meeting is at Cooper Union."
  entrance-fee="$20, $5 for students, $50 for full year membership"
  fee-schedule="http://www.unigroup.org/unigroup-fees.html";
  rsvp="requested, see below"
  for-more="http://laconi.ca/trac";
  more="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabber";
  
related-work="http://crackmonkey.org/pipermail/crackmonkey/2002-May/029875.html";
  edits="material removed to fit in mailboxen">

 Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:06:13 -0400 (EDT)
 From: Unigroup_of_NY <unilist@unigroup.org>
 Subject: UNIGROUP Meeting 18-SEP-2008 (Thu): The Laconica Project, 
Micro-Blogging, XMPP Standards

 NOTE: The Unigroup September 2008 meeting is at a NEW location!

 ======================================================================
 UNIGROUP OF NEW YORK - UNIX USERS GROUP - SEPTEMBER 2008 ANNOUNCEMENTS
 ======================================================================

    ----------------------------------------
 1. UNIGROUP'S SEPTEMBER 2008 MEETING NOTICE
    ----------------------------------------

       When:  THURSDAY, September 18th, 2008    (** 3rd Thursday **)

      Where:  ** NEW LOCATION **
              The Cooper Union  <http://www.cooper.edu>
              School of Engineering
              51 Astor Place  (8th Street, between 3rd and 4th Ave)
              East Village, Manhattan
              New York City
              Room: The Driscoll Room (1st Floor)
              ** Please RSVP **

       Time:  6:15 PM - 6:25 PM  Registration
              6:25 PM - 6:45 PM  Ask the Wizard, Questions,
                                 Answers and Current Events
              6:45 PM - 7:00 PM  Unigroup Business and Announcements
              7:00 PM - 9:30 PM  Main Presentation

              --------------------------------------
      Topic:  The Laconica Project and
              Micro-Blogging Based on XMPP Standards
              --------------------------------------

    Speaker:  Evan Prodromou,
              Control Yourself, Inc.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    INTRODUCTION:
    -------------

    Note: The exact September meeting title and topic description is
          based on preliminary information we have from, or know about,
          our speaker, and is subject to change.  We hope to include
          further meeting details in our next announcement.

    Also note that Interop is happening during the day of the
    September Unigroup meeting.  Plan your schedules accordingly.

    Unigroup Meeting Lineup:
      - 18-SEP-2008: The Laconica Project, Micro-Blogging, XMPP
      - 16-OCT-2008: The FreeBSD Networking Stack (George Neville-Neil)
      - 20-NOV-2008: Solaris (with OpenSolaris) Launch Meeting (Sun)
      - 15-JAN-2009: Linux Real-Time Messaging (Tervela)

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS:
    ---------------------

    To REGISTER for this event, please RSVP by using the Unigroup
    Registration Page:
          http://www.unigroup.org/unigroup-rsvp.html

    This will allow us to automate the registration process.
    (Registration will also add you to our mailing list.)
    Please avoid emailed RSVPs.

    Please continue to check the Unigroup web site and meeting page,
    for any last minute updates concerning this meeting.  If you
    registered for this meeting, please check your email for any last
    minute announcements as the meeting approaches.  Also make sure
    any anti-spam white-lists are updated to _ALLOW_ Unigroup traffic!
    If you block Unigroup Emails, your address will be dropped from
    our mailing list.

    Please RSVP as soon as possible.

    Note: RSVP is not mandatory for this location, but it does help
          us to properly plan the meeting (food, drinks, handouts,
          seating, etc.).  This means if you forget to RSVP, you
          can still show up at our meeting and get past building
          security.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    MAIN PRESENTATION
    -----------------

    Topic: The Laconica Project and
           Micro-Blogging Based on XMPP Standards

    Evan will be speaking on the Laconica project, the open source
    federated messaging system based on XMPP (Extensible Messaging
    Presence Protocol), which itself evolved from the Jabber project.
    He's expected to talk about the project (which is considered to
    be highly scalable and agile), its code base and lessons learned,
    a technical tour of it's API (Twitter compatible), it's multitude
    of features including how federation works (where messaging
    instances running on separate servers are able to remotely
    subscribe to each other), how all this provides extreme
    scalability, OpenID authentication, SMS integration, it's
    multi-lingual interface (using Gettext), it's AJAX-like
    interface, and discussing the system administration challenges
    of hosting a high traffic federated messaging system.

    The Laconica Project Summary:

    Laconica <laconi.ca> is an open source micro-blogging tool written
    in PHP that implements the OpenMicroBlogging standard based on XMPP
    (which came out of the Jabber project).  Laconica was created as an
    open source, distributed alternative to Twitter, and was originally
    used by the identi.ca micro-blogging service identi.ca>, which has
    received a tremendous amount of buzz since it's release during the
    Summer of 2008.

    Detailed Outline of Talk:

      (to-be-posted)


    Web Resources:
    --------------

    XMPP Messaging Protocol Standards
      http://www.xmpp.org/summit/summit5.shtml

    The Laconica Project
      http://www.laconi.ca

    Identi.ca Micro-Blogging Service
      http://www.identi.ca

    Control Yourself, Inc.
      http://controlyourself.ca

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Speaker Biography:
    ------------------

    Evan Prodromou is an Open Source developer from San Francisco
    currently residing in Montreal. Evan is best known for creating
    identi.ca, a micro-blogging site based on his XMPP messaging
    platform Laconica.  He also did a short stint at Microsoft, and
    is the co-founder of Wiki Travel <wikitravel.org>.  Evan's home
    page is located at http://evan.prodromou.name/.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Company Biography:
    ------------------

    Control Yourself, Inc. is a Quebec corporation headquartered in
    Montreal which builds Open Network Services sites that use Open
    Source software to create and distribute Open Content.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Giveaways:
    ----------

    Addison-Wesley Professional/Prentice Hall PTR has been kind
    enough to provide us with some of their books, which we will
    continue to raffle off as giveaways at our meetings.

    O'Reilly has been kind enough to provide us with some of their
    books, which we will continue to raffle off as giveaways at our
    meetings.

    Unigroup would like to thank both companies for the support
    provided by their User Group programs.

    Note: The chances tend to be about 1 in 5, that any attendee of
    our meeting will walk away with a fairly valuable giveaway
    (ie. most books are valued between $30 and $60)!

    As always, all of the books will be available for review at the
    start of the meeting.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

 < fee schedule and food description removed />

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Directions:
    -----------

       The Cooper Union  <http://www.cooper.edu>
       School of Engineering
       51 Astor Place  (8th Street, between 3rd and 4th Ave)
       East Village, Manhattan
       New York City
       Room: The Driscoll Room (1st Floor)

    Located on the North side of Astor Place (8th Street), between
      3rd & 4th Avenues.

    Enter the building, check in with the guard at the lobby for
      directions to The Driscoll Room (1st Floor).

    Nearest mass transit stations are:
      '6'           to Astor Place (stops right at The Cooper Union).
      'R'           to 8th Street, then walk about 2 blocks East.
      '4/5/6/R/N/Q' to Union Square, then walk South and East.
      'B/D/F/V'     to Broadway-Lafayette, then walk North and East.

    We believe free street parking becomes available at 6pm.

    -----

    Please mark this meeting on your calendar and join us!
    Please tell your friends about Unigroup!

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 < interesting and useful information removed; see website />

    =========================================================================
    = For Unigroup Information, Events and Meeting Announcements be sure to =
    = visit our World Wide Web Home Page:                                   =
    =       http://www.unigroup.org                                         =
    =========================================================================

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    List send an EMail message to:
         unilist (-a_t-) unigroup.org

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         uniboard (-a_t-) unigroup.org

    If you have recently attended a meeting and you are not receiving
    Email announcements, please send us an Email and we will make
    corrections to our lists.

    Please Email the Board with any suggestions, especially potential
    meeting topics and speakers.  Unigroup welcomes contributions and
    content suggestions for our newsletter.  Unigroup is a volunteer
    organization and we need your assistance!  Please let us know if you
    can help!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 -Rob Weiner
  Unigroup Executive Director
  unilist (-a_t-) unigroup.org
  http://www.unigroup.org
  
</blockquote>


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Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
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