New Alpharetta Rails Meetup

Looks like more of a coding support or study group, there's a new Alpharetta Rails Meetup forming. Please check them out. There's been some pushback on Ruby lately, some claiming that the number of new gems being committed is dwindeling, but a lot of people still like it and use it on a daily basis.

ALE and ALE-NW Update

In today's mailbag from JD:

Hope you don't mind this email ... you asked for feedback, but I didn't see any
way to contact you through the website.

ossatlanta.org - article " Tough Times for *nix Users' Groups".

ALE-NW only meets with SPSU students are there. That's August - May.
It is planned.
It is announced on the ALE email listsrv.

3 yrs ago, we held meetings in the summer and turnout was too low to maintain
it. We are flexible. ;)

The ALE.org content is NOT well maintained. The only way to know what is really
happening is to sign up for the email lists http://ale.org/?page_id=5. The mail
email list has 20-50 messages a day. It is fairly active about Linux-related
technology.

There are other Linux groups around the metro area.  The GA-400 Linux Group
meets weekly at I-285 and Powers Ferry. 4-10 people attend. Heck, there were 8
people there on Easter!
For more groups: http://blog.jdpfu.com/2013/06/03/lugs-atlanta-area-linux-groups

However - you are not wrong with the premise that Linux is becoming a standard
thing. Other groups that historically would be part of the LUG have spawned
their own meetings - OpenStack, Asterisk, Python, Ruby, Perl, Drupal, OWASP, and
those are just off the top of my head.

I completely understand why UNIX groups concentrate on HA and extremely large
scale - the lower-end has been taken over by Linux solutions. It is amazing what
a $5K Linux box can accomplish these days.

FYI - ALE-NW meetings for the '14-15 school terms:

Meetings 2nd Thursday of the Month (Starting in Sept):
    8/28 - Mini-How To and SPSU Organization
    9/11 - TBD
    9/20 - InstallFest - Saturday 10am-5pm
    10/9 - TBD 4th Anniversary!
    11/13 - TBD
    12/11 - Solstice / GPG Keysigning

2015 Meetings
    1/8 - TBD
    2/12 - TBD
    3/12 - TBD
    4/9 - TBD
    5/14 - TBD

Feel Free to contact either me or Jim Kinney for ALE questions.

Atlanta 3D Group

There's a new meetup forming for all things around 3D printing. See the Atlanta 3D Group page at meetup. It's just forming, but there seems to be a lot of buzz around 3D printing in town. Not strictly open source, but a lot of 3D printing seems to use open source tools.

Google Developer Group

Google's isn't strictly open-source, but they contribute a lot to the open source community. Freeside Atlanta has a new subgroup for Google Developers that cover topics like polymer.js, html5, etc. Check them out.

Geekspace Gwinnett Moves In

The region's latest makerspace, Geekspace Gwinnett now has a home and is building out. I went to one of their regular Tuesday Open House events last night. They're in the building out phase. So far they have Wifi and workbenches with a couple of older osciliscopes. In the back shop area are a couple of drill presses, an old Craftsman table saw in need of a tune-up, a small metal lathe, cutoff saw and scrollsaw. A milling machine is in the works as soon as moving equipment can be arranged. All in all, about a dozen people showed up and the space has great promise. So come out to one of their events and learn more.

Dart Meetup Forming

There's a new Northeast Georgia Dart meetup group forming. If you're not familiar with it, Dart is an open-source web programming language that compiles to JavaScript and is supported by Google. If you're interested in web programming, check them out.

Site Update

I updated the site from Joomla 2.5.x to Joomla 3.2.x. In the process I put a new, responsive template. I hope it serves the community well. Any comments and feedback are welcome.

Cloud Computing Meetup

Though not strictly open source, cloud computing has a number of open components: open APIs, underlying OS, etc. There's a Cloud Computing Atlanta meetup that has programs like Docker, an open-source Paas platform. If you're interested in Cloud, come out and learn.