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The history of CFGEEKSAs told by Kevin Inscoe... It has evolved over the years in several forms but the nexus of it all is the mailing list. The first mailing list started as an address book exploder called @cfgeeks some time in the summer of 1997. I had just started a new job and my old lunch time friends and I wanted to keep in touch. Problem was I was now working in Lake Mary (CBIS [now Convergys] at the time) and everyone else was in South Orlando (Coleman Research now L3). So we had to coordinate that since I usually was the one driving south. The original exploder was Gil Young, Kevin Korb and Vu Ma. Over the next year or so I kept adding to the mailing alias so I decided to create a Yahoo Group (then onelist.com). This became more of a chat list than meeting organizer (we would usually gather some where twice or maybe three times a year because of my distance from everyone else. Around 1998 I started getting involved with ELUG (now defunct and was the impetus for LEAP) started by Jeff Rose. I met Derek Barnett and Shawn McMahon through ELUG. They all joined the list. From there it just kinda grew as I met more and more geeks around town either by ham radio, co-workers or what not. In 2004 I hosted my own mail and web servers and the list moved from Yahoo Groups to the dedicated servers and cfgeeks.org was born. Since then the group has grown to 55 people (we don't have members or membership of any kind) most of them active on the primary email list. Several have moved away or have lost touch but the core group remains active. In early 2008 a Linkedin group was formed to hopefully create more exposure to geeks all around Central Florida. Derek, Karl and I are working on a podcast series over VoIP to explore new and emerging geeky things. CFGEEKS is the anti-meeting. There is never an agenda and rarely do we ever come to a lunchp or gathering with a topic in mind. We do not compete with any of the local user groups since we don't stick to any particular topic rather it is just a chance for geeks to come together and learn new things and get assistance with problems they are facing. Anyone is free to call a "lunchp" or gathering. All you need do is pick a place and a time (hopefully at least a day in advance) and announce it on the list. It does not need to be organized in anyway and you could have one every day of the week if you like. No one may show up or we have had up to 15 or 20 at a time. You just never know. And one of these days we will go visit the 2600 group out at the food court. :-) |
