Membership

With the largest concentration of members in Boulder, FRUUG membership extends along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins. Our members include a wide spectrum of technical people with a common interest in the UNIX system. FRUUG's long history began in April 1981 with the founding of the Boulder Users' Group (BUG)-- which makes the group one of the most long-lasting ones around. FRUUG's 20th birthday is celebrated during 2001 with a retrospective on some past meetings. There are currently around 350 members, and around 80 attend the monthly meetings. If you'd like to become a member or update your membership information, you need to fill out our membership form.

Meetings

We meet about once a month. Our meetings have many different styles, always with a technical focus. FRUUG does not provide a platform for companies to give sales pitches. Many of the meetings are oriented around talks given by speakers located (or collared) by FRUUG's executive committee members. Often these speakers are members of FRUUG themselves. We generally meet at the CU Academic Computing Center at the southwest corner of Arapahoe and Marine (at 38th) streets in Boulder, usually around 4pm. The 4pm time is chosen because we are a group for professionals whose job it is to stay current with the latest trends in technology; historically most people have preferred the late-afternoon time and find that they're able to leave work early one day per month. (We've tried evening times and had a big drop-off in attendance). Our meeting dates are set depending on speaker availability.

Our current meeting announcement is available on our Web site. At all meetings, we try to provide an atmosphere for meeting other members of the local technical community. We have been very successful in developing a program that is strongly technical in nature while providing valuable exposure to the range of open system developments. We sometimes manage to get copies of interesting slides, documents, and software from our speakers; you can peruse our collection of notes from past meetings for pointers to speakers' materials and other sources on our site and elsewhere on the Internet.

How We Do It

FRUUG is not affiliated with any company or national user group, nor does it exist as an incorporated entity. Part of being an informal group is that we don't have officers or even a bank account. The group is operated by volunteers and is supported by resources donated by the organizations hosting meetings. FRUUG provides hosting organizations with a technically astute audience and exposure to a variety of professionals along the Front Range. Organizations also support FRUUG by providing time and resources such as computers, copies, meeting rooms, etc.

Organization

Your FRUUG Executive Committee at lunch at Rudi's.
Back row: Neal McBurnett, Bill Meine, Steve Gaede, Carol Meier, Mark Carlson.
Front row: Tom Cargill, Barb Dijker, Joe VanAndel
Not shown: Dick Dunn, Wally Wedel

FRUUG is coordinated by whoever volunteers (or is recruited!) to help do the work. The FRUUG executive committee meets over lunch once a month to come up with meeting topics and make meeting plans.

We all have real jobs of one sort or another, so please bring your general UNIX questions to the next FRUUG meeting; we usually don't have time to answer e-mail questions like "why doesn't my printer work when it's attached to a parallel port on such-and-such a system."

The Executive Committee currently consists of:

• Tom Cargill, .profile Consulting,
• Mark Carlson, Sun Microsystems,
• Barb Dijker, Netrack,
• Dick Dunn, Talisman Farms
• Sam Falkner, Sun Microsystems,
• Steve Gaede, Lone Eagle Systems,
• Neal McBurnett, Internet 2,
• Carol Meier, .profile Consulting,
• Bill Meine, Sun Microsystems,
• Joe VanAndel, National Center for Atmostpheric Research (NCAR),
• Wally Wedel
• Lisa Week Sun Microsystems.

Each member of the executive committee helps with arranging the monthly meetings, and some have special responsibilities:

• Steve Gaede serves as the general coordinator, handling the Web site, meeting announcements, and other activities that hold the group together.
• Dick Dunn handles the mailing list.

FRUUG is an active organization because interested people get involved with coordinating and hosting the meetings. Anyone can volunteer to host a meeting, become a member of the executive committee, or simply offer to help out now and then.

February 2008: FRUUG Enters Quiescent Phase
After 27 years running, we're suspending operations.

Future Meetings:
None planned