About BillingsLUG

Brief History

The Yellowstone Valley Linux Users Group (YVLUG) was founded in the summer of 1998 by Scott Beverly and Brock Williams and originally met at Rocky Mountain College. After a few months, Scott Beverly ended up moving out of the Billings area and Scott Dowdle and Warren Sanders started helping Brock with planning meetings.

After a year or so, the meeting location moved to the downtown office of Cottonwood Computer Solutions, a business owned by Brock. After a couple of years, Cottonwood Computer Solutions relocated and meetings were held in their new location on the West End for a few months. As time passed, Brock became ever busier with his business finding it difficult to host YVLUG meetings.

December 2003 MontanaLinux.org takes over the YVLUG mailing list duties.

January 2004 YVLUG moves to Computer Dimensions on Grand Avenue. Then in May 2005 Computer Dimensions moved down two doors to MCS Office Products. Computer Dimensions and MCS are businesses co-owned by LUG member Jason Huether.

August 2005 the YVLUG became BillingsLUG. With the name change came the new BillingsLUG.org domain and assumed mailing list responsibilities. Then in September Scott Dowdle moved to the Bozeman area when Warren Sanders took primary responsibilities along with Donnie Lunder.

January 2008, after a year of rotating meeting locations "round robin" between MCS Office Products, ATM Express, and Computer4Kids in 2007, the group settled on holding meeting at Computer4Kids hosted by member and C4K volunteer Dan Spencer.

2010 - 2012, Meetings bounced back and forth between Yellowstone Systems at 1327 Central Avenue (now at 1300 24th Street West), American Welding & Gas, Inc. at their 1123 3rd Avenue North office, and Lannocc Technologies which at the time was located at 1148 1st Avenue North (now at 1440 Grand Avenue).

2011, Warren Sanders steps down from leadership, Shawn Wilson and Dan Denson take primary lead of the BillingsLUG.

September 2012, Shawn Wilson of Lannocc Technologies creates the Billings Computer Club on Facebook.