Setting Up a New Chapter

Currently there is no automated chapter creation or management. We will be happy to set up a page here for your chapter. Please use the contact links on the left hand side of the page and send an e-mail, and we'll get a page set up for you. Included below are some details on setting up a chapter.

As far as setting up a Hacking Society... I'm happy to set up a page or link to your own pages from the Hacking Society site. Currently, I don't have a way for you to upload your own pages, but would be happy to set up the pages and update them as you need until I do have some tool for updating them. For that, just provide me with the index.html page that you'd like to have linked with your society, and also information on where (physically) it resides and what it's name is.

For the NCLUG Hacking Society, I take meeting minutes at the end of every meeting and post them. See http://hackingsociety.org/chapters/nclug/meetings.html for a list of them that I've done. I've gotten a lot of feedback that members really like those minutes, because it allows folks to see what's going on, plus it allows people who couldn't make a meeting to see what's going on in their absence. Other chapters don't post minutes. It's up to you wether you want to post them or not. The NCLUG Hacking Society chapter page is probably a pretty good starting place for what information you want to provide on your page.

Another thing that you'll need when setting up a Hacking Society chapter is a meeting location. The NCLUG chapter held it's first couple of meetings at my house, then after that got an offer to use a conference room at a local business. We stayed there for about a year, then switched to another business conference room. We've had several offers of locations to meet, just by posting on the local Linux Users Group mailling list. Other chapters meet at coffee shops that have wireless.

You'll also need a schedule. Several Hacking Society chapters are associated with Linux Users Groups. These LUG meetings occur once a month, and the Hacking Society meetings occur on the same week-day the remaining weeks of the month. This is easy to remember. We meet for dinner from 7pm to 8pm, then hack from 8pm to 11pm at the NCLUG chapter. BLUG has dinner from 6pm to 7pm, then hacks from 7pm to 10pm (when the coffee shop they meet at closes).

Now that you've decided on a locatoin and a meeting schedule, it's time to announce the meetings. We usually announce the meetings on the local Linux Users Group list and at the meetings, because we participate heavily in them. We also mention them to people that we meet around town that are geeks. Any computer enthusiast mailing list or meeting is a good place to announce the meetings.

There's really not much to them. Good luck and let me know if I can be of any assistance.