Interface annual report for the year ending 2008-09-10
The past year has been a mixed year for Interface. On the one hand we have had a number of new initiatives such as MiniTalks, but on the other we have failed to attract new undergraduate students to grow our membership and lead the club in the future.
In the past year, we have had 5 minitalks on a range of topics, with more planned later in the year. The number of members attending our weekly meetings has been somewhat disappointing: we currently have 38 paid members, but we typically only get 3-6 at each weekly meeting. Even when we have had good speakers from outside the club (such as Martin Langhoff talking about the OLPC project) we have had poor turnout. I am not sure why this is.
Perhaps we have not done a good job promoting Interface at clubs' days, perhaps with the BE programme now running many students think that the Vic Engineering Club is a better fit, or perhaps we should have run more events through the year. Unfortunately our members have not been telling us what they want the club to do. We have ceased running installfests as we found that most people are now perfectly capable of installing their own operating system except for a few who would come every year with the same ancient hardware. Perhaps this has also contributed to our decline in active members, as we have in the past had a few people who have become involved in Interface following these events.
Summary of the year
MiniTalks by members of Interface and one external speaker
Partially cataloguing the InterfaceLibrary on librarything
Instituting new MemberDatabase to keep track of members and SWANS MAC addresses
- A number of LAN parties, run in co-operation with the Memphis Social Club
Upgrading the Interface user server (Machines/Smithers) to a more powerful machine from MCS