On Saturday, Innova Partners hosted a meeting of the Columbus Ohio Linux Users Group (as announced here). We think that the meeting was fun, and that we succeeded as hosts, but we did learn a few things:

1. If you’re going to have catered food, make certain that people know this. In addition to boosting attendance, it will save people a trip to Subway before they come in
2. Have a good place for the projector determined beforehand. If people are going to be seated for a presentation, make sure adequate seating is provided. We didn’t plan beforehand, and even though we managed to work things out we could have saved ourselves some hassle on the day-of if we’d set up on Friday.
3. If people don’t know where to park, post a map of the area. This is especially true if you happen to be a hot downtown software company. People were parking several blocks away — at meters — because we didn’t mention that the parking lot two feet across the street from us was free on weekends.
4. Apparently nobody cares if you offer Wireless Internet access.

If you weren’t there, you missed out on some awesome free food, and apparently free books! Someone (I didn’t catch who, I apologize) gave away a couple of awesome-looking books after the presentation on OpenID concluded. So, free food and drink, free presentation about a hot new authentication technology, and free reading material. Yeah, if you weren’t there, you missed out.

All-in-all, we think it was a rousing success. If the COLUG wants to meet here again, we’d be all for it. Next time, guys, feel free to hang out afterwards! We have a pool table, we have a keg of beer and a fridge-full of soda, and we probably have food left. Sit around, have a drink and a game of pool, and jabber about new scheduling methods in the kernel — maybe I’m just a geek, but that sounds like a good time. Maybe if we set up some tables? A couch?

As always, the few pictures I managed to snap off (one of which is previewed above) can be found on the Innova Partners Group on Flickr.