Announcing MWLUG Conference 2009 Sessions and Speakers

The MWLUG Conference 2009 is turning out to be an incredible conference. We plan to have 27 sessions covering administration and infrastructure, application development, and business development. We will have sessions ranging from UI interface design with Chris Blatnick, BES management with John Wargo to business case studies that will be presented by Lotus customers. For business partners who are involved with Lotus Foundations we have an entire session devoted on marketing Lotus Foundations in the mist of cloud computing. We are still finalizing a few additional sessions. Hats off to the MWLUG Session Committee who has help make this possible.

MWLUG Conference 2009 Sessions

MWLUG Conference 2009 Speakers

The two day conference is packed from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM each day with sessions and fun. The two day session will be kicked off by a keynote presentation by Ed Brill.

If you are planning to come, please register online since we need to have a head count for the Chicago River and Lake Michigan boat ride on Thursday. On site registration will be accepted, but we will accept checks only, no credit card.

Final MWLUG Signage Fixture Design Complete

The MWLUG Green Project team have completed the final design of the signage fixture for the MWLUG Conference 2009. The next task is to build the fixture using the selected materials. We had a bit of problem trying to get the materials that we needed. The minimum lot size of our main material, X-board, that we were required to purchase was incredibility large, 100 sheets which would have been $8,000.00. Therefore, we had to find alternative materials that would replace the X-board. The total cost of the new material is about $50.00. If I had it my way, it would have been free. All the materials for the fixture are manufactured within the United States or locally here in Chicagoland area. It will be made from materials that have been recycled, is renewable, or can be recycled. The replacement material uses glue made from corn starch grown in the Midwest. Since the materials are purchased all locally, we saved a significant amount of carbon emission required for shipping. We will unveil the MWLUG Conference fixture on August 27 at the conference. So if you would like to know how the final fixture looks like come to the MWLUG conference.

Sketch Models

These three sketch models were created from foam core. This a fast way to convert ideas from 2D to 3D. The 1/6th scale models help give us a deeper understanding of how to make the fixture, and provide a more realistic vision of how it will look.
Brainstorming different techniques to construct our designs was crucial, especially for the 3rd idea. One of the ways that we could achieve the complex curving shape would be to score the back as shown. This would allow the material to curve in two directions.

-Angela and Brian