Ha! I had to look that one up, but now i can’t un-see that one either!
The website has the new logo. This weekend I’ll have a look at Meetup.com. Then I’ll turn my attention to a business card with a QR code to make pinning on community boards easier.
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…and meetup.com features the new logo now too. 
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Is there any ability to change our meetup name to Homelabs Brisbane?
Yep. I’ve updated the name and spruced up our welcoming blurb a little (putting more emphasis on our homepage for more information).
My ultimate goal for this logo was to produce a handout card (among other things). I know nothing about graphic design, so the screenshot below is the result of about four hours of learning Scribus.
I’m picturing these primarily being pinned on library pin boards, or other community boards. I might even start dropping them in geocaches (i’m getting back into that with my son lately).
This is just a first draft, and some of you might remember the distance between my first draft of the logo itself and the finished product 
. I’m very keen to get some feedback. Too much information, not enough? Got other examples i should be looking at for inspiration? Do you have or know anybody with experience/talent with this kind of thing?
Looks good James. I’ll chip in with a few thoughts.
I prefer a more orthogonal view of the Story bridge and you know I think a river should go under a bridge rather than around. If quizzed we can say it was designed during a flood.
I wonder if the front of the card should say Homelab Brisbane somewhere. QR codes are fun but I might not use them if I saw this card pinned to a library notice board. I’d just google “Homelab Brisbane” or “Homelabs Brisbane” when I got back to my computer or perhaps more likely these days just perplex it. My preference would be to state our name and have a smaller QR code.
I like and would not change the back of the card. It says who we are, what we do and how we do it.
All this made me wonder about our “mission statement”. (You gotta luv mission statements.) Currently we have, “We’re a group of tech enthusiasts who enjoy exploring the latest trends in technology using our own hardware, in our own time. We founded Homelab Brisbane to connect with others who share this passion — to ask and answer questions, share insights, and make discoveries together.”
I think this also pretty well describes us and what we do. I’d say our group has fairly advanced technical knowledge of homelab setups and wondered if our discussions might be too intimidating for a potential new member who is just getting started.
If this is the case and we are willing to help get others started we probably need to work out how we should do that. It is not a trivial task and I would be interested in what @mcrilly thinks might be a good approach.
Also thanks for the favicon at https://homelabbrisbane.com.au. The HLB lettering is small and disappears with a dark theme on my Bookmarks bar but is OK in an active open tab.
In terms of the logo, ChatGPT hit a point of diminishing returns. Considering that ChatGPT was the only way that I was getting a result that wasn’t embarrassing, I just picked the one that I thought was our “peak” and bailed on some of our more challenging requests (like rivers that go under bridges).
Your feedback on the face of the card is great. I’ll make some more changes.
The mission statement subject is interesting. I couldn’t be happier with the group of people we’ve attracted. I love that we all have things to learn from one another, and things to teach one another.
I just wonder if our mission statement shouldn’t say something specifically about how much we value being supportive and welcoming. I think you’re saying that it’s easy for new members to be intimidated by very talented and experienced people, especially when our group is discussing very technically advanced topics.
Unfortunately, the reason we’re gathering is that we are seeking that content, so it’s a little bit of a dilemma. I’m glad you brought it up.
I hope people to feel comfortable asking questions and getting friendly support and guidance, particularly on this forum. I think the in person and online meetings are a way for people to meet a few friendly faces to make the forum less intimidating.
I don’t know that I’ve really answered you, but I hope I’m at least understanding the topic you’d like us to understand and (somehow) address.
Actually, I just tried to explain this subject to my wife and some interesting ideas came up.
I explained that we don’t want to discourage what people have been doing before they joined us. All operating systems, distros and methods of deploying and configuring software are appropriate if they have been working. We just want to respectfully exchange ideas and enjoy the process of expanding and sharing our knowledge.
Kris (the missus) said that her boss often kicks off meetings with a presentation slide to get everybody’s head in the game for the meeting that she’s about to chair. Maybe once we expand our mission statement we could include it in our meetings. Kind of the way some meetings include an acknowledgement of country, but our own variation of that.
Thanks James, in my roundabout way that was what I was suggesting.
My granddaughter’s bed time book, Timmy Tummy, notes “You are what you eat”. In HLB’s case we are what we write and say.
Our postings are by and for a small, self selected group interested in homelab technologies. I think our discussions are often pretty technical and at a fairly high level. @Belfry has noted that Google agrees. Unlike many online groups we are also geographically concentrated in southeast Queensland and northern NSW. This is both a disadvantage for our group but also a huge advantage for our in person meetings, which I particularly enjoy.
You cannot be all things to all people. I note that in the past some people have popped in for a while and then left. HLB was not for them. This is fine but I think you and I and some of the others would be happy to help out those starting out on their homelab journey.
You are printing up some business cards to distribute on public noticeboards telling people about us. I was therefore wondering what would be the best introduction to the group for those new members.
I am open to suggestions. Just spit balling here but we could have a list on the website of recommended resources for getting started, a workshop for setting up a proxmox server, an evening dedicated to getting the servarr suite running on your old computer, or an online session getting a minecraft server running under docker on a raspberry pi.
It will all depend on who turns up and that depends on how and where we market HLB.
I’m up for it.
"Tonight we are meeting on the lands of cyberspace. We acknowledge the traditional owners and pay our respects to our elders, past and present; to Lovelace and Babbage, Turing and Hopper, Thompson and Ritchie, and Torvalds and Joy.
We acknowledge the rich resources they have given us and the obligation we owe them to build a free and open land for ourselves, our compatriots and for those who follow."
… with apologies to John Perry Barlow.
Well, the other cool thing that’s happened recently is that we have a broader bench of people that are prepared to present. For a while it seemed like David and I were taking turns trying to fire the other one up on our latest passion project (which we usually did :D).
Our presentations don’t need to be one-offs either. Maybe we should maintain a register of presentations we’ve given in the past that we can draw from repeatedly. New members might like to ask for one to be repeated for their benefit.
Maybe we could also pair heavy topics with a light topic. A light topic might be as simple as any member being prepared to talk us through their machines and the way that they have them set up.
So many ideas!
I’m also thinking that my presentation on git didn’t really focus on the important thing I was trying to say. I think there was much more to say about stow and using some kind of source code management solution to help keep configuration for stuff like neovim, starship, kubectl, etc consistent across all of your hosts. I’d like another crack at that one day.
OK. Let’s make HLB promotion a topic for the next in person meeting (25 September).
Also I have made you the first presenter talking about git on that night.
Ooh, game on!
I wanna make that more about scripting a shell environment and keeping that environment consistent across machines. I think it’ll end up being a little on the heavy side. I reckon it’ll be about 50:50; I want to hear from others what i could be doing better, but some of it might be new to you guys too.
Did we like the idea of our meetings having a lighter subject presentation (probably first) followed by a heavier subject presentation?
Any volunteers?
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I think that’s a great idea, but may I suggest a subtle change to the nomenclature? Rather than heavy vs. light, perhaps just formalise the practice of aiming for around two or three different topics each meeting. That’s kind of what we’ve been doing as a group already, most of the time, but I think ensuring that there’s a diverse set of topics each time we get together is good practice.
One person’s light is another person’s heavy. That’s the beauty of this group - everyone has such an interesting set of projects, knowledge, and skills. I don’t think there should be a judgement (even indirectly by the order they’re presented) about which topics are light and which are heavy. For example, there are several people in the group showing amazing k3s and k8s setups and I’m still here trying to figure out what Docker is because I’m a dinosaur stuck in the land of VM or bare metal 
. Docker is probably a light to very light topic for a lot of HLB, it’d be a heavy one for me.
Aiming for two diverse topics is a better way to plan things. I think certs in the homelab + n8n worked really well last meeting. A few months before that Meshtastic (part 1), motioneye, and LLMs was a cool mix of topics as well. Loose top of the head examples: Linux CLI & home automation; homelab security & self-hosted media streaming; SDR & Linux desktop environments; Tailscale, Zerotier, etc. & AI for computer vision… you get the idea. Put two different topics on every meeting, so that there’s something for everyone to contribute to the group for their personal “heavy” topics, and something to be inspired by for the “light” topics that one might not even know was possible, and now wants to explore for the first time.
I have given the thickness of the lettering a bit of a nudge…
The one on the right is the newer version. More?
Looks good, JD. I’d go with newer version.
It’s not a house. It’s a home.
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