[Fsuk-manchester] University of Sheffield Free Software Society Intro

[Chris Warburton]

Hello everyone, I know I should've gotten around to this sooner, but
better late than never :)

I'm Chris Warburton and a couple of years ago I set up a student
society at the University of Sheffield devoted to Free Software. It
didn't do anything in the first academic year it was set up, other
than get paperwork filled in. Last year it managed to get a few people
involved, and this year we're getting quite a following.

As a small community it is sensible for us to reach out to similar
organisations in order to get more impressive stuff done. So far we've
had quite a number of installfests (some more successful than others),
we've had Stuart Langridge up to rant at us, we've formed
strengthening ties with the University's Sun Microsystems Campus
Ambassadors (who put on talks about OpenSolaris, XEN and things) and
the Computer Science Society, and less strong ties with ShefLUG and
Access Space (which we plan to improve). It would be great to include
Manchester Free Software as well!

There are a few administrative things restricting us (like requiring a
minimum of £3 for membership, an all-student committee, etc.) but
since we get a bit of funding and free use of the University's rooms
and facilities I think it's worth it ;)

For anyone interested we have a web site here
http://www.fss.union.shef.ac.uk with a forum. We don't have a mailing
list at the moment, since we feel it would divide discussions between
the forum and the list. We're looking at ways of synchronising the
two, which if successful means we can run a list without splitting
people up.

So, any questions about us and ideas for collaborative things are much
appreciated :)

Thanks,
Chris Warburton, FSS chairman