After starting the Capital Area BSD Users Group, founders Jason Dixon and I realized that other BUGs could benefit from the pooled resource and information sharing of user groups world-wide. They discussed their ideas with Darren Spruell and Darrin Chandler of the Phoenix BUG, and the MetaBUG began to take shape.

The goals of MetaBUG are:

• Foster inter-BUG relations to increase unity in the BSD community
• Increase awareness of user groups
• Share resources, materials, and information to promote BSD
• Distribute live feeds of speaker presentations
• Assist in starting or growing local BUGs
• Provide a BSD user group for users with no local BUG access

One of the most appealing features will be video streams of member presentations. Thanks to Brad Smith, we now have RTSP support for the VLC port in OpenBSD-current. This allows us to offer audio/video streams of live presentations to users around the globe, and for OpenBSD users to view it on their favorite desktop!

If your BSD user group is interested in collaborating with other BUGs, or you're a user without access to your own local group, join the talk@metabug.org mailing list. For more details, please visit http://metabug.org/ or send your questions to info@metabug.org.

Announcements have been made on Undeadly and Digg.