Date: February 12th, 2010 7:17:08 p.m.

Hello Asterisk Users and those with an Interest in VoIP Technology,

The agenda for our next meeting is: -Plan out the year- Yeah, I know, we did this last month. True. But now we need PRESENTERS!

We are having trouble getting access to a consistent meeting location so we are having the meeting at the Fuddruckers on France Ave, just North of 494. I'd like everyone to bring their topic of choice and we'll start to line up the presentations.

Last time we talked a little about the meeting format and we thought that something like this would work:

Social time 15- 20 min
Announcements 15 min
Presentation - Topic 45 min
Year long topic 10-15 min SIP and stuff. It was my idea so I'll take this one.

We also talked quite a bit about picking a different date/time for the meeting. The hope is that by having the meeting at a different time, we might attract people who don't want to / can't give up their weekend to attend a meeting. Please think of days/times that are available to you so we can pick a different day/time.

Here are some of the topics mentioned at the Jan meeting:

Legacy Hardware - If you know legacy phone hardware, please consider giving some talks on how it all works.
Virtualizing Asterisk and other telephony software. Know about virtualization or have experience? Tell us about it.
Hard phones and their codecs. There are some codecs that are getting more popular and how do they all work.
SCCP - Rumor has it that there are several people in the Twincities that know quite a bit about this topic.
Asterisk alternatives - What is FreeSwitch and how does it compare to Asterisk. Let's do a side by side comparison.
OpenSER / OpenSIPS / Kamailio - What can this software do and what makes it tic. Tell us what you know.
DUNDi / IAX - Show us the ins and outs of DUNDi and/or IAX.
Asterisk Classes - Have you taken any? What are they like? What did you learn? We want to know.
Backing up Asterisk - What works for you and what would you do differently? Teach us more.

There, that's a good start. Look over the list and pick something that you know about or that interests you. We'd love to have you give a presentation to the group on a topic. If you'd like to select a topic that isn't listed, great, we'd still like to hear it.

Projects - There is a group that could use our talents. They are the Twin Cities Makers Group http://www.tcmaker.org/blog/
They could probably use a nice phone system like asterisk to manage their phones and get their message out. How about we help them out with getting a system in place and do something to help this group. Who knows, maybe they would even let us land there a few times for a meeting. Have any hardware that you would consider donating to them? I think this would be a good group project for us. Let's find out more.

The meeting will begin at 11:30am on Saturday Feb 13th, 2010. If you can't make the meeting then please email us a list of what you'd like to present for the next year.


Hope you can make it!

Jay Taylor

p.s Sorry for the really late email on this. I am trying to get them out sooner, really I am. Since I'm doing the year long topic of SIP, I've noticed quite a few books out there on SIP. Anyone have one that they really liked? I'm looking for recommendations.