[SGVLUG] Organizing the SGVLUG party

[Lan Dang]

Hi all,

I wanted to acknowledge the people who have been working since SCALE to plan this party.  It was a lot of work and planning and we really leveraged our social network.  We kickstarted some ideas since SCALE, and then started meeting periodically since the end of July to make this all happen.



SPONSORS
========
* Bobby Messemer - our contact at OpenX, who has always been fabulously responsive to our requests.  He roped in Michael Lee and Drew Adams (our OpenSuse enthusiast).  They provided the venue, the pizza and drinks, and contributed the Raspberry Pi 2 grand prize and OpenX backpack.

* Albert Wong from Red Hat helped us get our banner and promo materials printed.

* Jasmine Brackett with Supplyframe/Hackaday paid for our cake. 

* Nathan Haines brought in the Canonical swag and donated a copy of his new book "Beginning Ubuntu for Windows and Mac Users".   He was, unfortunately, unable to attend the party.

* Doron Linder from Vim Adventures was nice enough to respond to my email about my idea for a Vim Adventures gaming corner, and gave us a license to play with and was agreeable to reassigning it to a user later.


* Richard Gaskin registered us with the O'Reilly UG program. Unfortunately, they don't do swag any more, but we can get a 50% discount code and an opportunity for members to earn free books through book reviews. We need to jump through a few hoops to accomplish that, so we'll talk more about it at the December LUG meeting.



SGVLUG PLANNING COMMITTEE
=========================

The folks below came to the planning meetings and were responsible for setup and teardown.  Additionally,

* James McDuffie started us down the road to the 20th anniversary party.  He noticed our anniversary coming up and helped organize the SCALE BoF meeting to kickstart the planning and started the initial conversation with OpenX.  He's also the man who handles our social media and website.  He was responsible for the Steam gaming corner and donated all the Steam game codes we raffled.

* Steven Doran led the planning meetings and contributed towards the food.  He was our emcee.  (He is also in charge of our SCALE booth.  Anything leftover from the party will be showing up at our booth next year.)


* Michael Starch also contributed towards the food, manned our registration desk and handled the raffle.

* Carlos Lopez also contributed towards the food.  He was in charge of the swag table and keeping an eye on things. 

* Jess Bermudes liaised with Nathan and Richard, set up our Eventbrite and Meetup pages, designed the SGVLUG banner and the tote bag and mousepad.  He was also working on an awesome Linux Jeopardy game, including hardware and software, but last minute events conspired against him completing it in time.  I think it is 95% complete, so I hope to see it at a future LUG meeting or SCALE. 

* John Wang (Tux-Lab) was responsible for most of the raffle prizes, which were made for our SCALE booth.  He was also our official photographer.

* Scoops Adamczyk liaised with Hackaday and donated the LinHES grand prize. 


* Ginko Lee made the fabulous poster we'd been using to promote our 20th anniversary. It ultimately became our guestbook, as well.  I will try to frame it in time for the December LUG.

* Michael Proctor-Smith brought the Tux doorbell and the SCALE-AV box, which we had up near the lectern.  We also appreciate his ability to get everyone's attention when we were trying to speak.

* Braddock Gaskill participated in the planning meetings.  He inspired us to make this a free and open event.  He also brought in the Unleash Kids booth.  

* I handled liaising with OpenX and Red Hat and SCALE.  I organized the community showcase.  I sent out targeted invites to as many people as I could remember and find the contact info for.  I'm really happy with all the people who came. It was a great mix of members from all eras of the LUG, as well as all the connections we've made in the past few years, since we joined Meetup and started cross-pollinating with other groups.

* Adam Lorta got roped into manning the Vim Adventures booth. Thanks Adam!


Lan