Fwd: Meetings and all things morlug.
"Andrei Smirnov" <[email protected]> Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:31:07 -0400
| Newsgroups | gmane.org.user-groups.linux.morlug |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi All, I've got a very interesting message from Thomas who was not able to post it to the group for the reasons he provides below. I think he has all the right ideas about our needs and strategies. At this point it's hard to see where to start. I would start with advertisement and try to attract more students to our meetings. Thomas suggests separating meetings between club and users. Ironically the issue of whether we need to split Morlug has been widely discussed in the past at the same time as mettings attendance was declining. And now it seems that keeping us alive is more of a priority than splitting us in half -:(. If I were to single out the main point of what Thomas suggests I would say that our prime objective is to promote Linux. No matter how informative or entertaining we can make our meetings for ourselves it does not really make our group stronger. After all, I can get all the technical info I need from the web or from this mailing list, or from linux magazines. I would add my voice to Thomas, and suggest that we should plan and execute a Linux promotion campaign at WVU. Our club-meetings should not be considered as critical, but we should focus more on user meetings instead (with free pitza and drinks) where we would attract WVU students who do not currently use Linux and lecture them on Linux things we all know about, no matter how boring it may be for us. And visual aids, like multi-vdeo projector from Linux laptop/desktop should be a must. We should show how easy it is, and what applications are there. Also, maybe we can buy a bunch of tux-T-shirts on the web and try to sell them on those meetings? But the immediate goal is the install fest. I personally can make announcement in the classes I teach and distribute fliers etc. I'm not sure if next Wednesday is a good time now, since as Michael pointed, we haven't done much in that respect. The idea of a joint event with ACM may be a good one, since many students will be there for other reasons. But we need to plan it so that we are visible on a joint meeting. Let's put plan on the table of what needs to be done, and for everyone to decide what part of it he can contribute to. As I said I can distribute fliers, do short lectures/demonstrations for the beginners on how to use Linux and what you can get from it. Everyone of us can do the same, so in future we can schedule weekly sessions of 1hr long for all interested. I think I've said enough and I do not want to overshadow Thomas message below. Please, read it - I found it very inspirational and up to the point. Thank you Thomas. Andrei ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Thomas I Higgins <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 09:32:28 -0400 Subject: Re: [Morlug] Meetings and all things morlug. To: Andrei Smirnov <[email protected]> Andrei (et. al.) - I am a new user who joined this group as a community member due to a referral from the Ubuntu web site. While I agree with some of what you stated, I do believe there are two other strong reasons for users to switch. 1) Cost of associated software. This is a strong incentive to switch as Linux software is often free, and if not, very inexpensive compared to comparable Windows applications. Most notable among users is OpenOffice vs. MS Office. 2) Not everyone buys a new commodity PC just to upgrade software. While upgrading to the newest version of Windows on your old machine may be desirable to many users, most find that the only truly compelling reason is a requirement by another software package for that OS. Linux, on the other hand, generally doesn't have that drawback because you can upgrade your OS at any time if needed without extra costs (typically), and it doesn't cost excessive amounts of money for hardware and/or software upgrades to gain the benefits of new functionality on older machines. That being said, the strongest reason I can see for not switching are 3-fold. 1) First and foremost, people are lazy! If you know Windows, you are more likely to pay to be able to stick with it then you are to switch to something free that has an associated learning curve. This is the single biggest issue I see with more widespread adoption of Linux in the short term (In the long term as people become more familiar with it, it becomes less of an issue). 2) Software availability and support. Linux does not have as much mainstream software readily available in front of the user, and what is there is supported much less vigorously, as pointed out. This means you are not getting people to switch because 'I have to have that software!' mentality. This is seen most readily in games. Can you imagine something like Oblivion coming out in Linux only? You would see such a spike in Ubuntu downloads (and other distros), just so they could play the game. Dual booting just for the game would become as common as Windows, and people would start actually getting use to Linux, just because of a game with a known name and following. This leads to 3) What software and support that is available for Linux is almost universally available in a win32 version as well. Why download and learn Linux when I can get OpenOffice for free for my Win32 box as well? So that then leads to what can we do to capitalize on the benefits of Linux and mitigate the downfalls. I would propose that the list below is some of the key things that need to happen across the country for Linux to grow even more: Teach Linux classes at every opportunity, especially beginner classes. Utilize computer labs (if possible) and invite community members. Start advertising in local businesses, offer food, and make it free. Also, teach it frequently - make it a normal thing twice a month (for example), but switch it up so different people can fit it in their schedules. Then as it spreads around the business community, open it more to the public. Advertise in the public library and at the grocery store. These methods will get people to come to them and learn Linux. Port every software package available into a Debian package for easier installation. Most users will want Ubuntu since it is free, simple to learn, and w/ the LiveCD they are able to try it without changing their current PC. Even better, make VirtualPC and VMWare virtual machines so they can install the players (available for free) and work with the machine on their current PC without loosing any saved settings. (I suggest VMware so they don't need to learn it once they switch to Linux, but there is a charge for the workstation which is required to create VM's) However, once this is done, they will want software to use on it, so porting the packages will help immensely. Write new software packages that are useful and just work! I can not stress the work part enough. There are so many issues with Windows programs, that if you can get a solid program that appeals to the masses without major holes or hang-ups, it becomes a "must have" software package. Then when people ask for it in Windows, offer the above mentioned VM option if they refuse to leave windows. You may not be able to get people to give up windows, but they certainly can become comfortable with Linux. Write games. Let's face it, the people that become most comfortable with computers first are gamers. If you can get a following on a line of games written for Linux, people will start to migrate, become comfortable, and then expand the community. As they expand, more software, especially games, will become available, more people will get introduced and become comfortable with the OS, and then it becomes a self-generating cycle. With the VMware Player available in Linux as well, people may even begin to switch as I have so that Windows becomes their VM hosted on Linux instead of the other way around. These suggestions are, of course, huge. No one person, or even group can do all of this quickly. It will take time and persistence, but I think these actions would go a long way promoting Linux, that is why so many others have worked this way within their Linux communities. If you join the Ubuntu community (for example) and help in any way possible, it helps with many of these things. What really gets everything rolling, however, is being a champion/advocate (whatever adjective you prefer) of Linux as an interface to your local community. Just work at it one person at a time and teach, teach, teach. Now regarding the group. I think you definitely need to schedule further in advance and advertise to the community as well as to the school. It would be a shame for the school group to go away, but it would be even worse if Linux lost it's voice in Morgantown completely. Schedule the user's group meetings separate from the club meetings so that general users and new users can join without feeling like they are trying to relive college (for better or for worse). The club should continue and be the spearhead of the user's group, maybe leading to a splinter group as it outgrows the club's ability to maintain the user group, but then that would be a new source of support for the club as well. We must get there first though. Build up your student roster and make it more formal. Utilize that structure for community meetings as well and develop a plan for each meeting. Give people direction and a reason for coming to the meetings, not just because the charter said you would. Develop projects such as the porting of Linux software into Debian packages. They seem easy enough, and if you can get a club server, you can even have your own package server available for community members. It also could be submitted to the core Debian/Ubuntu groups to be added to their package servers. While doing that (or even to get to where you can do that), hold the classes to get people interested. Part of why groups fall apart is there is no focus. That gives you a good opportunity to shape the group and give it a focus. Not only would you accomplish something useful to the group by doing these things, but you will also grow the group as they achieve something and feel useful to the group and community as a whole. People like to belong, but they want to belong to something meaningful. So make it meaningful. By the way, there are two reasons I haven't shown up physically...1) I live north of Pittsburgh and work in Pittsburgh, so it is quite a haul and 2) I am taking night classes at Pitt to learn Java programming, and that is on Wednesday nights, the nights your meetings have been on since I joined. Just thought you might like to know. I think I have rambled on long enough. I hope it still makes sense. If so, please post to the forum for me since my company has a firewall that prevents me from actually viewing and posting to the forum itself. Thanks, Thomas Higgins U.S. Steel, Deskside Support East 600 Grant Street Commercial: 412-433-3742 Steelcom: 8-723-3742 Fax Extension: 3749 "Andrei Smirnov" <andrei.v.smirnov @gmail.com> To Sent by: "Morlug List" <[email protected]> morlug-bounces@mo cc rlug.org Subject Re: [Morlug] Meetings and all 09/27/2006 09:05 things morlug. PM Thank you Michael, In fact I came to the meeting place a bit late and found it canceled. Now I see why. It's a pity we do not have a good attendance, but I think that poor attendance does not necessary mean that the group is dying - it's just we may be all busy sitting and hacking at our Linux boxes ?-:) I still believe that the support for Linux is growing and the number of users is actually greater than we think. One factor that may be discouraging for people to use Linux is the fact that almost all new commodity PCs come pre-installed with Windows. No 'reasonable' person will erase a piece of software that he payed some $200 for and install another one which came for free. Another factor is the reluctance of the third party software vendors to write applications for Linux. Consider for example Aobe: they don't seem to be hurrying with introducing flashplayer 8 for linux, and flash plugin on 64 bit Linux is non-existant, nothing to say about that Acrobat editor - the only reason I bought Apple is to be able to fill out those PDF forms. And even Google is not hurrying to release Google Earth and SketchUp, and who know what else. It would be nice to discuss on our future meetings what Linux community could do in that regard. I think your suggested topic about IP talbles is a very interesting one and I will try to attend. Andrei On 9/27/06, Michael Bond <[email protected]> wrote: This is going to be a bit of a rant, but an important one. This is both a WVU student group and a community group. We rely on everyone to do their part, to help, to plan and to share their knowledge. This evening is a good example of how this all broke down. Only myself and one other person showed up for the meeting this evening. As advisor to the group I have been extremely lax/passive/informal about how things get done. That's just how I am, I believe that if you have a group on intelligent people who can ask the right questions little needs to be done by an advisor or supervisor. This, sadly, doesn't seem to be the case with MorLUG for whatever reason. As such, we will have to become more formal. First, next wednesday was supposed to be an installfest. I haven't even seen if we actually have the room reserved or not. I also haven't seen any advertising. I suggest we postpone it to a later date. Next, we need members. We have 2 regular student attendees. We need 3 officers to be elected in January, that means we need more student members attending meetings so that we can vote. I hate saying this but it needs done, If we do not have enough students to hold an election in january I will be stepping down as advisor for the following school year. Finding new blood is the students of the groups job via word of mouth and advertising. Use facebook to your advantage. Hang fliers, etc. The meetings need to be announced to the mailing list with an agenda. I've been doing this, but again, i'm not here to run this group. I'm here to advise, and I advise you to select someone to announce meetings and agendas several days before hand. We have a list of topics in the last meeting minutes. Talk to the people, find out when they can do it and schedule it. I will add a topic to the list now: "Using IPTables to secure a linux box" ... its the one i worked on this evening. If another meeting is cancelled because of complete lack of planning i will be very upset. I want to see discussion on the list and a decision about who will be posting announcements and agendas within the next 2 weeks. I also want to know what the plans will be to advertise each and every meeting, and our up coming special events. Mike. [email protected] _______________________________________________ Morlug mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.morlug.org/mailman/listinfo/morlug -- Andrei V. Smirnov, PhD. http://smirnov.mae.wvu.edu MulPhys.com _______________________________________________ Morlug mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.morlug.org/mailman/listinfo/morlug -- Andrei V. Smirnov, PhD. http://smirnov.mae.wvu.edu MulPhys.com