Notes from MerriLUG, 15-March-2007, Matt Brodeur on PGP/GPG Encryption and key-signing

[Ted Roche]

Nineteen attendees participated in the March meeting of the Merrimack
Valley Linux User Group, MerriLUG, held as usual on the third Thursday
of the month at Martha's Exchange in Nashua, NH.

Matt Brodeur gave a presentation on GNU Privacy Guard, GPG, the
Free/Open Source implementation of the Pretty Good Privacy algorithms
and protocols.  Matt pushed the presentation pretty quickly, as he
wanted to ensure we had time for the keysigning, as well. Matt's
presentation is available from his website [1] and that link, in turn is
on the GNHLUG Wiki [2] along with the announcements and instructions.

Following the presentation, Matt and Heather Brodeur organized the
key-signing. Nearly a dozen of us had prepared and registered our PGP
certificates in advance, and we read out-loud our identifying
information, practicing our phonetic alphabet and confirming that I
should have brought my reading glasses. Following that phase, we lined
up in two queues and exchanged identification to confirm we had IDs that
matched our names on the certificates. Heather was the caller for this
slow-motion folk dance and kept us on task despite our urge to chat and
socialize. An odd number of attendees and one additional volunteer made
the sequence interesting, and we completed successfully.

Overall, I think the keysigning went quite well, by the number of signed
keys I've received in the last week. I suspect we'll have some feedback
for Matt, too, on whether there might be some way we could make the
follow-up key exchange easier. This was a lot of work, and I want to
express my personal thanks to Matt and Heather for all the work. Thanks
too, for all who attended and participated and asked questions, and
thanks to Martha's for providing the facilities.


[1] http://nexttime.com/mbrodeur/PGP-Mar-2007/
[2] http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/KeySigning

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com