If you have any topic suggestions, don’t be shy … let us know about them.
KWNPSA end-of-year social has had to be cancelled due to unexpected events. We will organize an alternative social sometime in the first half of 2020.
With all of the recent issues going on with social media giants, and, of particular with Facebook, we look to open source solutions where securing data and the sharing of personal data is of primary concern.
One such solution and replacement for FB is Friendica, which has gained some recent popularity. Built along the concept of federated Friendica servers and making use of various protocols such as ActivityPub (formerly ActivityPump from Pump.io), OStatus (from GNU Social) and Diaspora but apparently not Zot (from Hubzilla, which is odd considering Mike McGirvin created both applications); there is a lot to be said about Friendica’s appeal to social media.
On Monday, 11 November 2019, , we welcome Sean Howard who will work us through Friendica’s place as an open source alternative to FB and cover topics such as Friendica’s installation process and ease of server maintenance. We should also have time to cover Friendica’s interoperability with other open source solutions, protocols, data security, etc.
It should make for interesting conversation at a time when seeing social media giants at US congressional and senatorial investigations has now become the norm.
Marc, Steve and Bob
After much deliberation, we regret to inform you that our next KWNPSA meeting slated for October 21st is cancelled. We had contemplated putting it on, however, the fact that the date falls on voting day for our federal election just complicated matters too much.
Our next meeting will then take place on the evening of November 11th. Although, this falls on Remembrance Day, we could take a couple of minutes at the meeting to recognize those who have and are helping Canada in times of strife, and, in peace.
Our next topic will be posted soon as we are doing a bit of re-jigging of topics.
We will keep you posted as soon as our details are firmed up.
Have a great Thanksgiving Day and don’t forget to vote!
Marc, Steve and Bob
As of the last count for February 2019, NetMarketShare estimates that
Windows’ desktop market share sits at 87.56% worldwide, the rest of the
desktop market share is divided up between macOS – 9.65%, Linux – 2.14%,
Unknown – 0.32%, ChromeOS – 0.32% and BSD – 0.01%.
In September 1991, the Linux operating system was released by its
developer Linus Torvalds. Since that time, Linux has grown steadily into
an operating system to rival all operating systems. Today, the Linux
operating system is core to the Android cellphone system, is used
pervasively in enterprise business and banking, runs government agencies
and powerful science labs. What attracts these large groups to the Linux
operating system is the fact that it is open source and is developed
freely by an army of volunteer developers. In addition, the Linux
operating system is all developed free to use and modify by any
person or group.
For the average desktop user, the Linux system brings some
innovations to the desktop, as well as offers a system that is
largely immune (if regularly updated) to viral and spyware
attacks. By and large, one does not need to install a virus
checker on a Linux desktop, which frees the system from much of
the throttling of CPU speeds usually required by security
measures on the Windows operating system.
For this KWNPSA meeting, long-time member and co-ordinator Steve Izma
will demonstrate that the Linux desktop has all the facilities
needed for a range of users, from those only interested in Web
browsing to system administrators and programmers.
Coordinators:
Bob Jonkman
Marc Paré
Steve Izma
Are you a visual learner? Are you a visual presenter? Is a picture worth a thousand words? What’s an infographic, anyway? Do you use images to convey ideas? Bullet points? Wall of text? What’s the best way to get your message across? And what do you use to get your message across?
We’ll explore some of the different software available to create presentations.
* Marc Paré will offer a quick demonstration of LibreOffice Impress
* We need someone to demonstrate Microsoft Power Point — any volunteers?
Does your organization write documents? Work with spreadsheets? Create graphics? Make presentations? Do you use an Office Suite of applications? Do you need support for your Office Suite? Do you use Free/Libre and Open Source Software? Would you like to put all this together?
Welcome to the Inaugural Meeting of the LibreOffice User Group!
KWNPSA/NetSquaredKW will host a LibreOffice representative to discuss plans for establishing a local LibreOffice community group. Then Marc Paré, a long-time member of KWNSPA who also volunteers for the LibreOffice Foundation will make a presentation about the LibreOffice organization and member-based meritocracy.
Together we’ll establish a common monthly date and place where members would meet so the LibreOffice User Group can get underway for August.
And, of course, we’ll have our round-table problem-solving discussion on all things related to LibreOffice and User Groups.
–Marc Paré, Steve Izma & Bob Jonkman
Meeting Notes
Marc Paré showed a slide presentation on the creation of the LibreWaterloo Community Group
“LibreWaterloo” (LibreOffice Community Group)
Proposal of Activities to Undertake
For more information or to join the community
Marc Paré
623 Bluenose Crescent
Waterloo ON
N2K 4H4
Cellphone: 519-744-9396
marc.pare@librewaterloo.ca
marc@marcpare.com
marc.pare@libreoffice.org
https://www.parEntreprise.com
Do you manage projects? Software development projects? Are they big projects or small projects? Are there many or few developers? Is it complex software or easy to understand? Are you developing for external customers or your own organization? Are there many opportunities for testing or only a few? Can you develop new code while testing, or is development dependent on test results? Are transient coding errors tolerated or not? Do you need Agile or Waterfall Development?
Let’s discuss different coding methodologies with an expert in the field. Perhaps you are that expert!
–Marc Paré, Steve Izma & Bob Jonkman
Guests:
Is your Non-Profit an educational organization? As its main function? Or is teaching one of many services you offer? What do you teach? How do you teach it? Do you have classrooms? With computers? What software do you use for teaching in the classroom? Do you have online courses? What online software do you use online? How do you establish your curriculum? How do you perform evaluations? How do you track student progress? Do you work with other educational institutions? Other certifying agencies? What constraints to they impose on your teaching programs?
We’ll have a demonstration of Moodle by Marc Paré and perhaps a representative from KW’s Desire To Learn. And, of course, we’ll have a Round Table discussion on how each of us are managing our organizations education needs.
–Marc Paré & Bob Jonkman
If you work in software development, how much of your job involves testing? If you’re a project manager, do you work closely with the testers to keep an eye on their results and bug reports as a project progresses? If you are a developer, do you do your own unit testing and work with testers on test plan reviews and fix the bugs they find when they do integration and regression testing? If you are a software tester, how do you balance the need to be thorough with the need to deliver on time? How does that affect writing test plans? When a project team has to deal with a lot of changes in the middle of development and testing, how do you cope with updating test plans with limited time? Since you should be considerate when reporting bugs in software, especially when people have worked hard on it, how can you do this tactfully? How do testers work with people like technical writers who use test plans as a reference when writing documentation like user manuals?
Nicholas Collins, a long-time member of KWNSPA and a professional software tester will give us an overview of the deep art of testing software.
— Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré
One of James Bach’s talks on YouTube
