Better Ubuntu through better shipit ?

[Vincent Trouilliez]

On Thu, 2006-05-18 at 08:53 +1000, Andrew wrote:
> I read your post as suggesting that we centralise a point to -collect- 
> Ubuntu cd's from in order to avoid uneccessary postage costs and postage 
> wait times.

That's it :o)


> I believe this is already sort of happening with local clubs etc 
> ordering bulk lots to distribute at monthly meeting or events etc.
> 
> All it would take is a centralised list of clubs/companies that have 
> bulk quanitities and if someone requests a CD from a particular area 
> that has a 'Bulk Lot Point' nearby they can be directed to that 
> company/club to collect one, and then only mailing out individual cd's 
> to individual people once the first option has been checked.


Exactly !! :-)

The local clubs would be a starting point, but we must make sure we know
of all of them, and that there details are on the list, so that Shipit,
hence end users, know about them. For a start, I live in a developed
country, in a large town, so maybe there is an Ubuntu club down my
street, but I don't even know about it !! :-O
So we must formalise all this, and try to develop our "network" to cover
all the major towns. If we only rely on Ubuntu fan clubs, I doubt we
will cover all of France for example. So we must try to convince
computer shops to be part of our network, and distribute CD's.
Also, we could use all Linux clubs, not just Ubuntu fan clubs, to try
have a better geographical coverage.
Basically right now it's a few ubuntu clubs spread randomly over the
country. What we need is to take it from this "amateur" level, to a more
formal, organised level level, to ensure an even a comprehensive cover
of the territories, and and computerise this (database) so that we can
efficiently keep track of all these collect points, so that the shipit
system has up to date, reliable information to direct the end user that
order CD's. Unreliable informations would be a disaster, for example I
remember, before Ubuntu existed, and I was a Linux newbie, had no CD
writer nor Broadband, I looked on the Suse web site to find a local
company that carried Suse CD's. When I went to that company, telling
them I saw their details on the Suse website and would like a LiveCD,
they treated me quite badly, they looked at me strange. I eventually
realised that they didn't have a clue what Linux was, nevermind Suse,
and certainly had no CD for me ! I e-mailed the webmaster of the Suse
website to ask what was going on, and he didn't even reply to me, nor
did he remove this company from their list !
I dread to think what newbies would think of Ubuntu if they had a
similar experience as their first contact with the distro ! :-/


--
Vince