Summary of TTCS meetings held in 2006

We hold two types of meetings : Pizza Limes and Tech Meetings.

“Pizza Lime” is the name given to our monthly discussion forum which is usually held at Pizza Hut, Roxy Roundabout, Port of Spain on the second Wednesday of the month. During the course of the year, Pizza Hut increased their prices (for both food and the party room) to a level which we could no longer afford.  Fortunately, we were able to hold several pizza limes at  F1 Connect  #33 Mucurapo Road, St. James, Port of Spain in the fourth quarter of 2006. Pizza was purchased from the nearby Papa John’s.

At a tech meeting we have computers (and other equipment where necessary) on site to demonstrate a particular type of hardware or software. These meetings held at Engineering Consultants, 112A Edward Street, Port of Spain or at Handarnold Trinidad Ltd, El Socorro, San Juan.

Contents

Wednesday January 11th, 2006 – TTCS Pizza Lime

Main topic for discussion was discussing the release of the TTCS OSSWIN CD online for download.

Saturday January 21st, 2006 – TTCS Podcast #8 recorded

See https://www.ttcs.tt/2016/09/16/ttcs-podcasts-1-to-20-from-2005-to-2010/ for notes and download links

Wednesday February 8th, 2006 – TTCS Pizza Lime

Topics discussed :

Wednesday March 8th 2006 – TTCS Pizza Lime

Topics discussed :

Saturday March 11th, 2006 – TTCS Podcast #9 recorded

See https://www.ttcs.tt/2016/09/16/ttcs-podcasts-1-to-20-from-2005-to-2010/ for notes and download links

Wednesday 12th April 2006 – TTCS Pizza Lime

Held at Pizza Hut, Valsayn, topics discussed :

Saturday April 29th, 2006 – TTCS tech meeting – Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird extensions and themes

Colin gave the first presentation about Mozilla Firefox. After discussing several Firefox myths, he reviewed: how to install and uninstall extensions, themes and plugins for the browser.

Problems that may be encountered (such as conflicting extensions) were discussed along with possible solutions.

Dev T gave the second presentation on extensions for Mozilla Thunderbird.

Wednesday May 10th, 2006 – meeting with ICANN

We met with John Crain and Jacob Malthouse from ICANN, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.

The meeting was held at Engineering Consultants and lasted several hours. A variety of topics were discussed ranging from what ICANN does and how it functions, the situation regarding the .tt domain and how groups like TTCS can get involved with ICANN

The meeting was recorded, and an unofficial transcript was done by Vasudev and Dexter, with final formatting by Colin : Download transcript : Transcription2a.pdf

Mark Lyndersay wrote about the meeting in his 23rd May 2006 BitDepth column.

Thursday May 11th, 2006 – TTCS Pizza Lime

Held on Thursday at Pizza Hut, Roxy to cater for the meeting with ICANN on Wednesday May 10th, 2006. Topics discussed :

Saturday May 27th, 2006 – TTCS Podcast #10 recorded

See https://www.ttcs.tt/2016/09/16/ttcs-podcasts-1-to-20-from-2005-to-2010/ for notes and download links

Wednesday June 14th, 2006 – TTCS Pizza Lime

Topics discussed :

Saturday June 24th, 2006 – discussion of Internet Bandwidth Management

Held at Engineering Consultants, to discuss the “Internet Bandwidth Management” proposal document from the Ministry of Public Administration and to formulate the response to it.

The TTCS comments on the “Internet Bandwidth Management” proposal (PDF ; 140K) were submitted to the Ministry on June 27, 2006.

Wednesday July 12th, 2006 – TTCS pizza lime

Topics discussed :

Saturday July 15th, 2006 – TTCS Tech Meeting – Microsoft Vista Beta 2

Dev T gave a demonstration about Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 , Microsoft’s upcoming operating system and pointed out the various features of Vista.

At the end of the meeting, an official version of Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 on DVD (which comes with serial code), was given away.

Wednesday August 9th, 2006 – TTCS Pizza Lime

Saturday August 12th, 2006 – OSS LAN gaming

This meeting was a LAN party which focused on OSS (open source software) games for Windows.

The games played :

Saturday August 19th, 2006 – Podcast #11 recorded

See https://www.ttcs.tt/2016/09/16/ttcs-podcasts-1-to-20-from-2005-to-2010/ for notes and download links.

Sunday August 20th, 2006 – test of mobile Wi-Fi hotspot

This scheduled meeting was cancelled due to the sudden unavailability of the required equipment. The concept had been tested earlier however and we can use Wi-Fi for future meetings.

Saturday August 26th, 2006 – TTCS tech meeting – a look at MacOSX

Our first meeting to be held at Hand, Arnold (Trinidad) Limited, El Socorro Road Extension, El Socorro, San Juan.

(See http://tinyurl.com/knbef for a satellite map of its location on Wikimapia)

Ricardo Sandy of F1 Connect showed off several features of the version of Apple’s MacOS X operating system, codenamed “Leopard” (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/),  showing the features highlighted by Steve Jobs keynote earlier this year. F1 Connect also bought several Intel-based Mac computers such as the Mac Mini to demonstrate their capabilities.

Mike T demonstrated several of the iLife (http://www.apple.com/ilife/) applications.

Saturday September 16th, 2006 – Software Freedom Day 2006

Also held at HandArnold.

The meeting was to celebrate Software Freedom Day 2006, a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

At the meeting, Dev T showed how to dual boot Windows and Linux (using Ubuntu, a popular Linux distro). The steps taken :

  • Defrag the Windows partition to create free space at the end of the hard disk which could be used for Linux. Check the free space after that. You should have 5GB to run Linux comfortably at least.
  • Next boot the Gparted Live CD. Gparted is a program which can create/resize partitions. Gparted was used to resize the Windows XP partition to create 10GB free space.
  • Ubuntu was then installed and pointed to use the free space. Ubuntu created a boot menu so you can boot into either Windows or Ubuntu.

Also, shown on another machine was Ubuntu installed with XGL/Compiz, which uses graphics cards hardware acceleration to show several visual effects not seen in Windows or MacOS X.

Saturday September 30th, 2006 – report about ICANN workshop on Sept 9-10, 2006

After the TTCS meeting with ICANN on May 10, 2006, the TTCS submitted an application to ICANN on August 22nd, 2006 to be designated as an “At-Large Structure.”

The application can be viewed at http://www.alac.icann.org/latin/applications/ttcs-22aug06.htm

ICANN hosted a workshop on September 9-10, 2006 in Buenos Aires, Argentina to bring together such groups and lay the foundations for the development of a regional at-large organisation to be called the Latin American and the Caribbean Regional At Large Organization (LACRALO). This organisation would consolidate regional policy advice on Internet management.

Anil Ramnanan attended the September 9-10th meeting and discussed the workshop today at Engineering Consultants.

Also discussed was the Ministry of Public Administration and Information (MPAI) response to the TTCS comments about the proposed “Internet Bandwidth Management Strategy”.

Saturday October 28th, 2006 – TTCS pizza lime

Held at ENCO, the topics discussed :

A machine with MS Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 was also available for anyone who wanted a first look at Vista in action.

Wednesday November 8th, 2006 – TTCS pizza lime

The meeting was held at F1 Connect at #33 Mucurapo Road, St. James, Port of Spain (next to Papa John’s).

Topics discussed :

Re: the November 1st, 2006 MPAI workshop, Dev T had attended the workshop and discussed the findings from it.  At this workshop, the MPAI presented two broad proposals to address the issue of Internet Bandwidth Management :

  • Development of an Internet eXchange Point (IXP) :
    • how such an IXP be developed and managed
    • the best location for an IXP
  • local hosting of local content :
    • what should be done to promote local content development
    • how should domestic hosting be developed and managed
    • where would such a local hosting facility be located

After the MPAI did a presentation of both issues, attendees were broken up into two groups to look at each topic. At the end of the workshop, both groups presented their findings.

The MPAI later published an Overview of Internet Bandwidth Management Consultation (PDF ; 72K)

Saturday November 11th, 2006 – discussion of “Role of OSS in TnT”

Held at Engineering Consultants (ENCO).

The discussion focused on formulating our response to the Ministry of Public Administration and Information (MPAI) discussion paper on “The role of Open Source Software in Trinidad and Tobago”.

Points raised in the discussion were captured on our wiki page: Role of Open Source Software in TnT

Saturday November 18th, 2006 – “Role of OSS in TnT”

The deadline for comments on the Ministry of Public Administration and Information (MPAI) paper on “the role of Open Source Software” was November 25, 2006, so a second meeting was held at Engineering Consultants (ENCO).

Once again, points raised in the discussion were captured on our wikipage : Role of Open Source Software in TnT

View the  Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) comments on “The role of Open Source Software in Trinidad and Tobago (2006 – 2008)” as submitted to MPAI on November 25th, 2006.

Saturday December 16th, 2006 – report on ICANN General meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Dev T represented the TTCS at the ICANN general meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil from December 2-6, 2006.

As one of the ten accredited ‘At-Large Structures’ (the TTCS received accreditation from ICANN in November 2006), the TTCS

together with representatives from the other nine accredited ‘At-Large-Structures’ signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with ICANN to create the Latin American and the Caribbean Regional At Large Organisation (LACRALO). Related links :

You can see a video clip of the signing of the MOU :

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Rmpp0VLQQ]

Photos of the ICANN signing MOU with Latin American and Caribbean At Large Structures –  http://flickr.com/photos/bretfausett/314961791/

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