Re: Re: ideas for a newbies night

Good thread, great topics. Haven't attended a session in years, but this 
tempts me!


ROBERT ADORNATO wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm fairly new to Linux, having started with Ubuntu, and in an effort to learn more have migrated to Slackware.
>
> I'd certainly attend beginner/intermediate sessions like these:
>
> Ideas for subjects/themes that I'd attend
> - Command-line basics
> - "Why linux is like taking care of your own bicycle"
> - FLOSS Software:
> -- Blender
> -- Open Office, more than just "Word,Excel,PowerPoint"
> --- just what are all those other programs that come with OpenOffice?
> -- Interactive sessions about the width and breadth of FLOSS software
> - Base System Setup night (or 3)
> -- Installing (aka installfest, but never having attended one, how much troubleshooting / module tweaking / custom kernel compiling goes on?)
> -- getting on-line, browsing & set-up with e-mail
> -- basic Security considerations, both GUI & CLI
> -- setting up regular back-ups & basic restoring, both GUI & CLI
> -Tour of the on-line resources, from the informed viewpoint
> -Exploring a distro hour/night:
> -- Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Slackware, Debian, Arch
>
> Intermediate:
> - "Welcome to /etc 101"
> - Getting a server going:
> -- music
> -- Apache
> -- home user file server
> -- a wiki (DokuWiki, MediaWiki) and keeping it safe
> -- a Mythbox/Boxee/XBMC
> - "Just what does a home user need MySQL for anyway?"
> - "Just what does a home user need Python for anyway?"
> - "Make that old PII-PIII (486? Pentium Pro?) in your basement/garage sale into something" night.
>
> Advanced:
> - Lego (Mindstorms) & Linux:  Taking advantage of the OpenSourciness
> - Just what does an Advanced Linux User do anyways?
> - "How to build a HighPerformanceSuperMegaUltraNifty Linux Cluster completely out of solar powered Intel Atom-processors and Open Source Software in the comfort of your own living room, why you should want to, And what to do with it once it's done."
>
>
> Those are my (mostly) serious topics of interest.
>
> Thanks,
> Rob
>
>
>
>
> --- On Thu, 3/5/09, R RENAUD <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>   
>> From: R RENAUD <[email protected]>
>> Subject: Re: [oclug] OCLUG needs a newbies night
>> To: [email protected]
>> Cc: [email protected]
>> Received: Thursday, March 5, 2009, 2:23 PM
>> Summary:
>> - Lets start some discussion.
>> - Follow up on this mailing list to let us know what talks
>> you'd like
>>   to hear at OCLUG meetings or tutorials.
>> - What level of talks, beginner, intermediate, advanced.
>> - If you're a beginner but don't know what you need
>> to know, send mail
>>   about that too.
>> - Also follow up if you can give a talk about something. 
>> Even if you
>>   can give a short talk on something you know about, it
>> could still be
>>   informative for someone just learning that topic.
>>
>>
>> Brad Barnett writes:
>> | On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:51:08 +0000
>> | William Case <[email protected]> wrote:
>> ...
>> | > 
>> | > Roland Renaud who has been arranging speakers for
>> the last year, has
>> | > asked several times for suggested topics.  We
>> discussed having
>> | > lightening talks for newbies and as refresher for
>> the rest of us at one
>> | > of our recent meetings.  If newcomers want
>> introductory talks, just
>> | > email [email protected].  I am sure there are
>> plenty of members who are
>> | > willing to do a quick talk and invite people to the
>> beer sig for follow
>> | > up.
>>
>> Rather than sending mail directly to Roland, suggestions
>> and
>> discussions about meetings and events should go to
>>     [email protected].
>> That's the official purpose of the list:
>>     http://oclug.on.ca/mailing_lists/
>>     - oclug-events a discussion list and archives - An open
>> list used
>>       to plan special events and coordinate meetings. 
>> As a subscriber to the list, I'll still read your mail
>> and so will others.
>> Your ideas on meeting suggestions might inspire other
>> suggestions or
>> encourage someone to give a talk on that subject.
>>
>> By sending mail to the list, you eliminate the need for a
>> single
>> person to respond to your mail in the event the contact
>> person changes
>> or is unable to read your email.  Fault tolerance eh?
>>
>> On that topic, the group will be electing a (possibly) new
>> board of
>> directors at the April meeting.  This is a good time to
>> discuss how we
>> want to improve OCLUG, its meetings and what we consider to
>> be an
>> improvement.
>>
>> We usually have over 50 people at each meeting.  Some
>> attend,
>> regardless of the meeting topic but there is also a group
>> composed of
>> people who only attend if the meeting agenda is interesting
>> to them.
>> The mailing list is a good way for those people to indicate
>> what they
>> might be looking for or to volunteer to speak on a
>> particular topic.
>>
>> | Hi Bill,
>> | 
>> | I think there is a miscommunication here.
>> | 
>> | It isn't really possible for a new Linux user, who is
>> attending OCLUG for
>> | the first time, and wanting help with his machine.. to
>> email Roland
>> | three months before he's tried Linux, and request
>> help.
>>
>> I'm reminded of one of my university math professors
>> who assumed that
>> we understood what he was teaching because there were few
>> questions.
>> We had to inform him that we were sometimes unable to
>> formulate a
>> reasonable question but that didn't indicate we
>> understood what he was
>> trying to teach.
>>
>> I think it's the same for novices, they can't
>> request a talk on topic
>> "foo" because they don't know that
>> "foo" is preventing their computer
>> from doing what they expect it to.
>>
>> | I think the reoccurring requested theme I've seen
>> over this list for the
>> | last seven years or so, is a permanent, every meeting
>> night, help for
>> | novices assist.
>>
>> At the March meeting, I asked who considered themselves to
>> be 'fairly
>> new to Linux' and saw 20 - 25% of the audience raise
>> their hands.
>> However, OCLUG has been around for a while so we also need
>> to keep it
>> interesting for the more experienced users.
>>
>> We need to discuss how to have a mix of meetings or topics
>> at the
>> existing meetings that is useful and interesting to the
>> range of
>> members.
>>
>> This needs to be discussed further; probably on the
>> oclug-events
>> mailing list since not all members attend the meetings.
>>
>> In the unlikely event that the traffic on this list gets
>> excessive,
>> don't worry, the final results will still end up in
>> oclug-announce and
>> on the website.
>>
>> BTW, who's a novice?  Some of us have been using
>> computers running
>> Unix, Linux and other systems for many years and can claim
>> some
>> knowledge on certain topics.  However, the time we spent on
>> those
>> topics prevented us from learning others so we are still
>> novices on
>> those topics.  Personally, I'll admit to being a novice
>> on many topics.
>>
>> | Keep in mind that you may be in a situation where you
>> have relatively few
>> | novices at the meeting, as meetings are over their head,
>> and therefore
>> | you have no novices to request tutorials!
>> | 
>> | Chicken and the egg thing, you know.  After all, would
>> you want to be a
>> | member of a club that taught you absolutely nothing
>> useful, confused you
>> | to no end, because everything was over your head?
>> | 
>> | Would you continue to go to meetings about iptables, you
>> name it, when
>> | you didn't know what 'ls' was?
>> | 
>> | Note, OCLUG may wish to remain more in the realm of the
>> non-newbie.
>> | Frankly, while I've done tons of work in the past
>> assisting new users, I
>> | have little desire to do so now.  I can't think of
>> anything more draining
>> | than helping grandma learn how to plug a USB flash drive
>> into her
>> | machine, again and again.
>> | 
>> | Probably a result of working in IT support for years, of
>> course.
>>
>> I've also worked in IT support and although my users
>> had more computer
>> background than grandma, I appreciate that someone might be
>> skilled in
>> one aspect of computers but support on a new (to them)
>> topic is much
>> appreciated.  I appreciate that you've had your fill of
>> this but it
>> still might be useful for OCLUG to pursue.  If you're
>> there, we'll
>> have to give you the tricky ones.  :-)
>>
>> | Maybe there should be an entirely different meeting night
>> for new users,
>> | staffed by not-quite-as-new-users.  I once was a member
>> of a club, that
>> | did just that.  Other years, said club, always started 2
>> hours earlier
>> | for novices.  
>> | 
>> | Anyhow, just some thoughts.
>> | 
>> | > If there is a huge response we can arrange a
>> tutorial night -- or
>> | > something.
>>
>> OCLUG used to have tutorials on a different night. 
>> They've recently
>> tended to the expert end of the field but we could possibly
>> have some
>> beginner talks at either a different time or location.
>>
>> Most conferences have different tracks for different topics
>> (eg:
>> novice, expert) but this suggests more speakers and
>> probably more
>> rooms.  I don't know if that would be workable with the
>> current size
>> of the group.
>>
>> Michael Richardson once suggested we have experts track and
>> a novice
>> track.  He thought it could work in a single room but I
>> think it would
>> be difficult to have simultaneous talks in our current
>> room.
>>
>> I appreciate the room we have at Algonquin but it's
>> just not designed
>> for simultaneous talks.  Maybe we can get T117 and T119 in
>> the future?
>> Either way, we'd need more speakers to run multiple
>> tracks.
>>
>> For the last year, I've been speaker
>> "co-ordinator" but it has been
>> mostly of a job of getting enough speakers to fill the
>> meeting rather
>> than co-ordinating and selecting which topics would mix to
>> make an
>> interesting meeting.
>>
>> It's been a bit of work but if people want me to,
>> I'll try to improve
>> on it in the next year.
>>
>> We just need more feedback on what types of topics people
>> want
>> ... and more speakers.  :-)
>>
>> roland
>> -- 
>> OCLUG general discussion list
>> [email protected]
>> http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/oclug
>>     
-- 
OCLUG general discussion list
[email protected]
http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/oclug