Volume 1, Issue 1 + URGENT MEMBERSHIP INFO
The bulletin of NEXTSTEP/OpenStep User Groups International
(nugi, with an umlaut on the u)
II. Mailing Lists
III. Web page
IV. Special Interest Groups
V. Job Opportunities
But first, an URGENT MESSAGE from our sponsor:
Gerben Wierda, the nugi coordinator, wants to thank all of you who have responded to our query to join nugi. Unfortunately, we were not sufficiently clear as to what information is required. You must:
a) provide ALL the information
b) provide two DIFFERENT email addresses for the rep and the group
The reason is that we want to have two different lines of communications to user groups, in case a rep disappears or disagreements between reps and their groups. Not that we expect any problems, but the whole reason we have a charter is to provide a means to resolve non-trivial disagreements.
Could those of you who submitted applications to join that didn't meet the above criteria, please resubmit your application to Gerben? That will save him the effort of having to remail all of you. Another (hopefully clearer) form is located at the end of this message.
If for some reason you really only have one active member with email, let me know, and we may be able to work something out once we process the first round of applications.
Welcome to NUGI News.
nugi's main tool is communication, leveraged by NEXTSTEP. With the departure of Darren Smith from NeXT, and the elimination of the position of User Group Liason, we are on our own. The hope is that NUGI News will serve as a lifeline between user groups. There is a lot of energy, initiative, and ideas in the NEXTSTEP/OpenStep User Community, and we want to help spread that around.
This irregularly produced publication will attempt to keep you in touch with what is happening with nugi. In general, nugi does not want to become a vast organization doing all sorts of activities. Rather, we'd prefer to be in the background, helping you and your groups do those wonderful things. For that reason, I (as nugi President) will try to keep it more like a bulletin than a full newsletter. Our primary goal, though, is to serve you as best we can. So, do let us know what kind of information you would like to be getting from nugi via this bulletin. Plus, we are certainly open to helping support a group or individual who would like to do an international newsletter. And if you can think of a better name than NUGI News, let us know that, too. :=)
Weapologize to those of you who are still receiving multiple copies of this newsletter. Due to the circumstances surrounding Darren's departure and nugi's founding, we have several overlapping lists of individuals. This includes Darren's email list, a list compiled at last years Expo, and so on. Many of these names are obsolete, and Darren's list could disappear at any moment.
Over the next month, we'd like to rationalize our email lists to reflect the current situation. After we prune non-existing individuals and groups, we'd like to divide the list along the following lines. We appreciate your comments, as well as offers of assitance!
For convenience, it would make sense to have parallel lists for both NeXTmail and non-NeXT mail. Would people want MIME support as well?
For nugi purposes, we need to have a specific list of nugi members for the nugi Assembly. However, at least until we've become sufficiently well established to include all user groups, we'd like to keep in touch with non-member groups as well.
Only groups may become members of nugi. However, I am sure there are just hoards of you out there who just can't wait to donate your time, talent, and money (ha!) to assist nugi in its work. We'd like to keep track of a pool of people who either have ideas or would be willing to pitch in to help others who do.
This is just to give you a feel for where we are going, and give you a chance to provide some feedback. Please be patient with us as we try to pull all the pieces together.
Thanks to the valient efforts of Rohit Khare and the Caltech eText project, we know have a nugi WorldWideWeb page at StepWise (http://www.stepwise.com/ - ask your local Internet guru if you don' t know about Mosaic and 'The Web'). We do not have a final URL for the nugi page, but it should be setup by early next week.
Right now, it just has minimal information about who nugi is. Eventually, we'd like to work with StepWise on maintaining user group information, and providing a full library of user group resources. Let us know if you have any ideas or suggestions.
To help focus attention on various issues, nugi is attempting to catalyze several SIGs. These groups would be run by an individual experienced in that field. They could provide technical support, marketing suggestions, or political advocacy, depending on the topic. Many such groups have existed in the NeXT marketplace over the years, and we'd like to collect them together and provide some backing to help them be effective, as well as found new ones.
Some ideas that have been floated around include:
- Publishing/Graphic Design/Multimedia
- Manufacturing/Process Control/Real Time systems
- NEXTSTEP/OpenStep Class/Application Development
- Statistics/Charting Packages
- Education/Teaching
- Databases
If you would be interested in joining - or leading - such a group, let me know; and we are always open to more ideas.
Since Darren's departure of, NeXT switchboard has instructions to route all queries about user groups to me. We received the following query which I decided to pass on to you. Let us know if you do or do not like getting this kind of information from nugi.
A major banking concern in Chicago is looking for several Solaris/Nextstep
system administrators. The position is long term and if desired can be a
permanent position. The client is interested in "bullet proofing" their
network which consists of 300 NextStep nodes. Interested candidates should
call Mark Grimshaw or Diana Trowell at 708-292-9119.
A major financial services corporation has multiple opportunities for
NextStep developers. These opportunities include Senior and junior level
developers, and analysts. Ideally, the candidate should possess: excellent
written and oral communication skills, and perferred knowledge of application
development in the financial industry.
Interested candidates should contact Allen Brockett at 703.734-9199 or
1-800-367-9119. Email address: abrocket@tri.com or frankj4304@aol.com
If you have additional questions, contact nugi@negen.twi.tudelft.nl