We have initiated a BSD user group in New York City called NYCBUG

(pronounced "nice-bug").
There are two goals for this new user group:
First, to provide a forum for the many BSD users in New York City to

discuss and debate topics of interest to the BSD community.
Second, to provide a bridge to users interested in learning more about or

expanding their knowledge of the BSD family.
Our kick-off event will be a free "birds-of-a-feather" session at

LinuxWorld Expo at the Jacob Javits Center on January 22nd at 5:45pm, Room

1E15.  We will have a presence at various tables at the expo, including

those of BSDMall and New York PHP.
Our first presentation, "Secure by Default: Learning from OpenBSD," will

be held on Wednesday, February 4th at 7:00pm in the offices of

SageSecure, 116 West 23rd Street and 6th Avenue on the fifth floor.  To be

given by Wes Sonnenreich, author of "Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls"

and "Network Security Illustrated," this talk will deal with crucial

security concepts and best practices for today's computing environments.

Subsequent meetings will take place at 7:00pm on the first Wednesday of

the month.
Our website is located at www.nycbug.org.  The site will include a joint

documentation project with New York PHP and OpenlySecure.org, focused on

providing original documentation to new and experienced BSD users alike.

NYCBUG also provides community mailing lists to assist in discussion and

learning about the BSD world.  Interested users join the mailing list at

http://www.nycbug.org/mailinglist.html.
NYCBUG is open to all interested individuals, including, but not limited

to, users of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, OpenDarwin, Darwin

and Mac OSX.
Since the origins of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX in the

1970's, BSD has been a consistent force among the backroom servers of the

world, powering internet service providers, hosting firms, and web sites

such as Yahoo! and 2600.com.  NYCBUG works to assist current users, those

interested in learning more about this fundamental

operating system family and various other BSD projects, and to provide a

channel for community interaction.
We look forward to supporting the BSD community in a variety of ways in

the coming months and years.  Please join us in making NYCBUG a success.