Hi all,
It's me again, with one last post
to annoy your email inboxes. I realized we never actually published the
results of the election on myUMBC:
- President: Rob Emmet
- Vice President: Josh Marciante
- Keeper of the Bread: Adam Barrow
- Keeper of the Lore: Pat Gomes
- Keeper of the Servers: Griffin Sober
- Keeper of the Drinks: Alana Reyes
- Keeper of the Bread Board: Matthew Duphily
- Environmental Advisor: Joshua Bush
- Junior Environmental Advisor: Matthew Quast
- Graduate Liaison: Craig Stone
... we may have gone in a little hard on the meme positions. Anyways. Congratulations to all the new board members!
Many
exciting things are in store for the upcoming year. We have obtained
two new (well, used) servers and, thanks to the generosity of DoIT, have
installed them in the campus data center. Together these comprise
Greenbank's replacement, known as SADNET, and it's shaping up to be more
robust, featureful, and powerful than Greenbank ever was. Improvements
include a smoother auth system, the option of ESXi in addition to
Proxmox, a large public IP range, and per-person private VM pools. We
hope this system will prove useful for students' projects and learning
experiences.
In addition, we have a new
software project planned; but I'll let the new president tell you about
that. Finally, we have a event coming up at some point, where UMBC
students can make their own mini-home-servers using Chromeboxes we
provide.
That concludes the useful info. The rest of this post is just a story that I figured I should write down eventually.
When
I was first introduced to this club, it was at Involvement Fest, in the
fall of 2019. The club was pretty much a Cyberdawgs spinoff, the whole
board being Cyberdawgs members. The table was mostly bare; the founder,
Drew, had a cardboard sign labelled "SAD club looking for SAD members"
(see thumbnail), along with some cool QR code art (that linked to a dQw
URL, of course). I joined, of course; it sounded awesome, and how could
you say no to that face?
The following school
year brought, well, maybe three or four meetings. I only went to one or
two of them myself. When I was there, there were maybe four or so
attendees. It was the pre-COVID world; there were in-person CTFs and
hackathons and parties (just kidding, this is UMBC). Seemed nobody had
time for a nerdy club with a funny name. Eventually, around spring of
2020, Drew prepared to graduate, and held an election meeting. I wanted
to attend - so I could run for something funny like Environmental
Advisor - but couldn't, due to a class. So imagine my surprise when he
came to me later and said "oh yeah, Nikola, we made you president." Of
the club I'd been to about two meetings of.
And,
so, what now? I asked Henry to be the VP, and he enthusiastically
agreed. I asked Bradley to be the treasurer. The rest of the board was
populated by random Cyberdawgs graduates (yeah, pandemic and all, SGA
did not actually check if they're active students). Around this time,
COVID hit, and the club with the funny name was pretty low on everyone's
list. It was mentally shelved away until fall of 2020.
That
fall arrived - sadly, still online. We showed up at Virtual Involvement
Fest. We meme'd up the myUMBC page. We made a Zulip (something
something, self-hosting); a whopping 13 or so people joined. And we held
a meeting - on Jitsi, as always - and lo and behold, people came!
Cameras off, muted, talking via the textchat in true CS fashion - but people
came! And they were actually interested!
In
retrospect, the lockdown may have been a blessing in disguise. This is a
computer club; we are computer folks. Nobody had time for it, at least
in its baby state, in the in-person world. But in the remote world,
while many clubs had to go dormant, SAD functioned just fine. And so
interest grew. And the meetings gradually became more cohesive and
contentful. And personally, I really started looking forward to those
Friday nights, a spark of life in the dreary COVID world of 2020.
When
spring of 2021 rolled around, we launched Greenbank - from a server in
my basement. The rest of the club finally knocked some sense into me and
we switched from Zulip to Discord. We had our first meeting run by a
non-board-member: Leyton's AI talk, which was followed by Daniel's Swift talk. And at some point, per Emma's
suggestion, Bradley got us a brick. The SAD brick. It says "SAD" on it.
In
fall of 2021, at long last, we were finally back in person. The ILSB
became home base; post-meeting dinners at dhall ($6 Fridays!) became a
tradition. There was a lot of turnover, as always happens over summer.
Some "online SAD" regulars stuck around, but most went on to other
things. I, personally, will always be grateful to those who showed up on
Jitsi back when the entire pitch of this club was "we have a funny
name".
In late 2021, we were invited to give a talk at HackUMBC. I think that's the first time we realized this thing wasn't just a meme club anymore.
Going from 2021 into 2022, Bradley
finally figured out the arcane language of the Finance Board, and won us
$1000 for a new club server. DoIT, to my surprise, actually agreed to
let us put it in the data center (no need for the original plan of
hiding it under the floor tiles), and overall their generosity surpassed
our wildest expectations. Griffin, Josh, Rob, and Matthew all held
meetings, and they were phenomenal. The club was no longer just Henry
and I sharing our screens on Jitsi setting up Ubuntu VMs. It was the
real deal.
And, well, that's it. That's where
we are now. The club that started with a cardboard sign at Involvement
Fest, a half-fake board, a constitution about Calvinism, and a few guys
on Jitsi talking about Minecraft and Linux... now has servers in the
data center, multiple active projects, HackUMBC presentations, a 150+ member Discord, a
10-person board, consistent active meetings, and a brick.
To say that I am blown away would be an understatement. Since 2020, I have been continually shocked to find that people are actually interested
in the club with the funny name, and to see the amount of support we've
received. This club has unquestionably been the centerpiece of my
latter two years at UMBC, and yes, ironically, SAD has made me quite
happy. Through this club I've had fun, made new friends, and learned so much.
And so I'd like to thank Henry Budris,
without whom this club probably would have died, for sticking with us
since the early days. I'd like to sincerely thank Drew Barret for founding this
thing in the first place, silly name, rickrolls, and all. I'd like to
thank Bradley Stamler, Emma Hunter, Matthew Quast, Leyton Lineburg, Daniel Williams, and the other board
people and COVID-era members. I'd like to thank Geoff Weiss, our faculty
advisor. I'd like to thank Toren Smith for his presence, knowledge, and
support, and the other DoIT staff (Damian, Roy, and others) for their
help and generosity.
And I'd like to thank
everyone who contributed, or simply just kept on showing up, to the club
with the funny name and the brick. I wish I could list out all your
names, but if you're reading this, you know who you are.
So long, and best of luck to the new board. I'm immensely excited to see where this thing will go.
Have fun!