I attended the CALUG meeting tonight. It made an interesting contrast to the CMAP meeting of last night. The CMAP meetings are a bit more organized (structured) and presentations are a bit more formal. CALUG tends towards the informal end of the spectrum.
CMAP and CALUG both offer attendees free pizza and soda. I find CALUG's pizza a bit more digestible, but that may simply be due to different vendors. (CMAP uses Papa John and CALUG uses a local shop.)
I find the folks at CALUG more approachable. It's easier to start conversations. The conversations are generally deeper and more meaningful. Folks at CALUG focus on the art of programming (or sysadmin-ing, or management) and folks at CMAP focus more on careers. Well, the 'P' in CMAP stands for 'professionals' so perhaps a professional is one who keeps his career in mind.
The CALUG meeting had a presentation on GNU Screens and Byobu. GNU Screens lets you multiplex a terminal session, and byobu lets you manage the configuration. A "repeat" talk, but still interesting.
More interesting were the side conversations. One with a Tenable employee about talent, management, and angry drivers. We also chatted about Agile Development techniques and their advantages over "Big Design Up Front". Another conversation was with some DP veterans (I say "DP" because in their day that's what it was called) about the Ada programming language, DVD players, lucky finds, and early personal computers such as the Commodore PET and the Radio Shack TRS-80 model I.
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