17

The initiative on meta

got a great response. It quickly became the highest voted question on meta. This fact and the well thought out concept convinced Stack Exchange to join TUG:

Now it's up to us to choose further eight individual members! Here we already talked about that:

According to answers and votes, moderators and deserving TeX.SX members seen by reputation could be these members. I think, a self-nomination list here on meta could be a good way though, since it shows really interested members who aren't already TUG members. I know some of high reputation users and moderators are. Well, it may give a very similar result!

So I ask: who would like to become a member of the TUG?

I especially encourage

  • moderators
  • former nominees for the moderator job
  • very active users on meta
  • users who earned high reputation because of their contributions

to step forward. Perhaps you would tell us, if you would like to join, why, and what are your ideas regarding the future of this cooperation?

(Btw. @all: posting ideas and comments to the announcement on the blog would be great too.)

It would be great if you all vote for deserving candidates. Let's take about a week for that. The final decision is up to Stack Exchange, who made this happen.

Edit: List completed

We now have the eight members we are allowed as 'representatives' of TeX.SX. TUG will be informed of the names pretty soon, and hopefully the new members will bring benefits to TUG and to TeX.SX.

closed as too localized by Stefan Kottwitz♦ Oct 28 '11 at 13:55

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22

I'd happy to be one of the members representing TeX.SX in the TeX User Group. I'm planning to visit the TUG conference next year if possible and maybe present some of my LaTeX work there. It might also be good to have TeX.SX presented there so the knowledge of it is spread. This would give us a good chance to attract more (La)TeX gurus and explain that we are not just another LaTeX forum, but a great resource with a great community.

  • It will be interesting to see where it takes place. If it's in Europe then I will try to go. Perhaps UK-TUG should volunteer to run it ... – Joseph Wright♦ Sep 17 '11 at 8:22
21

I'd like to join the TUG. When I tried to join online, I browsed the TUG pages and I discovered the possibility of institutional membership. So I thought it would be nice to do this together with some fellow TeX friends and join with the whole SE network, so I posted this idea on meta and here we are.

19

I'm not among the top 30, let alone top 10 users on TeX.SX, but I'd still be interested in joining the TUG.

I haven't been here for very long, and I've only gotten to use extensively and hack TeX/LaTeX in the last few months, but I like to contribute when I get the occasion (and the Q&A on TeX.SX have already been the occasion for me to create 6 new CTAN packages -- and 2 are cooking on github, waiting for their turn). I'm not sure if my family life would let me attend conferences (but who knows, that might happen).

19

Initially I was reluctant to put my name forward, as probably won't have the funds and time to go to TUG conferences (and represent TeX.SX there). On the other hand getting TUGboat on time would certainly be nice. So after some prodding by Stefan I'll put put my name on the list of people who would like to join the TUG.

  • 5
    Great! I appreciate your activity on meta and on the main site. Besides your questions and answers, also your editing and voting show your merits for the site and the community. – Stefan Kottwitz♦ Sep 20 '11 at 20:25
  • NB tug has a bursary for attending conferences... – Will Robertson Sep 25 '11 at 13:13
18

I would.

Background:

Before joining this site, I was certainly someone who wasn't afraid of hacking (La)TeX, but my hacks were just that: hacks. They worked, but that was about all that could be said for them.

Before joining this site, I learnt about TeX from a mixture of internet searching and reading the source code of packages. That's not really conducive to writing robust, simple code.

Nonetheless, I was having fun with TeX and making it do what I wanted (rather than me having to do what it wanted). Sometimes I'd come up with something neat that others liked the look of and I'd make my code public so that they could. But always with a warning that the code might not be pretty! I certainly would never have dreamt of uploading something to CTAN!

I'm not much of a "joiner", and I dislike mailing lists, so the thought of joining a community of TeX users never crossed my mind before, though I was vaguely aware of the existence of such from my internet searches.

All of that's changed now, thanks to this site. I feel that I have a much better understanding of TeX and LaTeX, and consequently my code has improved (I won't say that it's anything to boast about yet!). I've even published a package on CTAN!

But most of all, participating in this site has meant that without meaning to, I've joined a "TeX community". And it's quite fun. So I'd like the opportunity to find out if I should join a Real TeX Community(TM).

Benefits For Me:

I have learnt a lot through the question-and-answer format of this site, but there are things that aren't really learnable in this manner. I feel it's time I learnt those things as well and being part of TUG would give me access to those materials in a timely fashion. Often the difficulty with wanting to learn more about something is knowing what to learn: a regular "magazine" with topics and so forth is a good way of overcoming that.

(I don't know how the institutional membership thing works, but if chosen I would take advantage of it for a fixed length of time and use that to assess whether or not I should join as a personal member.)

Benefits for SE:

I participate in a few SE sites (and I include MathOverflow in that) and have strong opinions on what does and doesn't work. I think that the SE model works really well for TeX and that this site is an absolutely brilliant addition to the TeX world. I have no shame in "site dropping" (like name-dropping but about websites) and would continue to do so in all TUG activities. When given the opportunity, I would gladly explain why I think that TeX-SX is a valuable resource for the TeX community At Large.

Disadvantages (or similar)

The one thing about TUG that I wouldn't be likely to participate in would be the conferences. If I were nearby, I would attend, but that's not all that likely. I can understand that this might be an important factor so thought it best to mention up-front!

  • There is a Nordic TUG. If it works like DANTE, then I think your institutional membership (you are a shoo-in) should give you cheap local membership and you will be able to travel down the road and tell everyone they should really sign up. – Charles Stewart Sep 17 '11 at 8:25
  • @CharlesStewart: I can't help noticing that their site has not been updated since 2003. Running a small TeX group tends to be tricky. – Joseph Wright♦ Sep 18 '11 at 15:28
  • I just subscribed to their mailing list. Looking at the archives, I don't think that I need worry about being flooded with email! (Since that's only available to subscribers, I should add that the last email in the archives was sent in 2009, and in the whole of that year they just broke in to double figures in number of emails.) – Loop Space Sep 19 '11 at 8:16
  • Great to see you here! Especially your activity on meta advanced the site. – Stefan Kottwitz♦ Sep 20 '11 at 20:42
17

I'd also like to be part of TUG (for one year) - I am not one of the top n% users and answerer, but I would write a TUGboat article about some nice LuaTeX hacks so every TUG member could profit from that.

  • 1
    I'm looking forward to reading your article and your book on LuaTeX! – Stefan Kottwitz♦ Sep 20 '11 at 20:31
  • @StefanKottwitz I have submitted my article and hopefully it is good enough to appear in the TUGboat – topskip Jan 16 '12 at 18:09
16

I'll add my name to the list of people who would like a membership. I'm not currently a member of TUG, but I'm certainly active on the site here, and have contributed to the larger TeX community, both in terms of some packages and support scripts (now part of TeXShop.)

I agree with Andrew about how great the SX site has been to the TeX world, so I'd also be happy to do what could be done to promote it (if TUG membership would help that.)

14

I'd be interested to represent tex.sx in the TUG. I won't be able to participate in TUG conferences (unless they are taking place in Austria ;-)), but I think that both tex.sx and I would profit from me having immediate access to the TUGboat journal. (E.g., I'd no longer have to rely on draft versions of great articles about key--value packages for writing my own packages.) I'd be happy to share the newest "TUG expert knowledge" by answering questions at tex.sx, and I'd be happy to show "newbies" at tex.sx (but maybe veterans at comp.text.tex and the like) that our site is developing into a valuable net resource for TeX & friends.

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