Virtual Meetup for relief efforts for Haiti

To: SFBay Apache/Lucene Solr Meetup Members
From: Grant Ingersoll, chairman of the Apache/Lucene PMC
Subj: A virtual meetup for Haiti Relief


Dear Luceners,

As you all no doubt know, the recent earthquake in Haiti has had a devastating effect on not only the people living in Haiti, but many others around the world who are connected to Haiti via family and friends and who have either lost loved ones or are still unsure about their well being. On the personal side, several members of my immediate family have direct ties to Haiti, having either been born there or having volunteered there for several years (that's my brother in the picture here
at Healing Hands for Haiti, which makes the tragedy all that more real and the need for help all the more urgent.

It is with these people in mind that I am writing this letter to ask everyone in our small community to put aside, just for a moment, the focus on search and open source, and to reach out to the Haitian community with a donation.

To facilitate this, we have teamed up with several publishers of Lucene/Solr/Mahout books and are sponsoring a raffle with the winners getting a free copy of either a hard copy or an eBook. (We're not actually convening a meetup with this scheduled event, it's just a simple way to get this message out to you all).

You may choose any of several leading organizations listed on our site who are providing critical rescue, relief and rehabilitation aid. Please click here to do your part. We will announce the winners on Monday, January 25th.

Thank you,
Grant Ingersoll