[ubuntu-uk] Improving Support

[Matthew Daubney]

On Thu, 2010-05-27 at 00:17 +0100, James Tait wrote:
<snip>
> Matthew Daubney wrote:
> [snip!]
> > Secondly, thanks to the people who turned up to my (frankly awful) talk
> > at Oggcamp on this subject. Next time I have a chance to talk about what
> > I'm trying to achieve I _should_ be able to do it better! As a result of
> > that I have some notes I'm slowly going through to gain some ideas of
> > how to move forward, but this moves me onto point three.
> 
> Well I was in that talk and I thought you did fine, so thank you.
> 

Phew, at least someone was listening! Thanks for coming along.

> > So really, what drives you to support people? What, in your own opinion,
> > could be done to help motivate yourself to do better?
> 
> So many reasons I'm bound to forget as many as I list.
> 
>  * I believe in the software and the people behind it.
>  * I believe in the power of the community - if we each do a little bit
>    we can achieve a lot.
>  * I like sticking it to The Man!
>  * I was that cluebie newless once!
>  * When I first started *really* using Ubuntu a few years ago, Popey was
>    a massive inspiration to me, my hero.  As time has gone on, more
>    people have done the same.  I hope that I can inspire people and
>    maybe be someone's hero too.
>  * Supporting other users is one way of giving back to a community that
>    has given me so much.
>  * Sometimes that little bit of help makes someone's day.
>  * Sometimes they even thank you!
>  * It's beneficial for me to understand users' problems.
>  * It's beneficial for me to demonstrate that I know the answers to
>    users' problems.
>  * It's beneficial for me to learn from users' problems.
>  * I cannot bear to think of a life where every day I get up, drop the
>    kids at school, go to work, pick the kids up, go back to work, come
>    home, eat, go to bed and start all over again.
>  * Often my day job is so infuriatingly frustrating I like to achieve
>    something with my evening so the day isn't wasted.
>  * I'm a geek.
>  * I enjoy a challenge and don't like to quit.
> 

That's quite a long list! Here's an interesting side question, what
would help motivate you to improve the way you support people? How do
you think it could be improved?  

> There are *loads* more, but that should get you started.  It's not all
> philanthropic, I do stuff that benefits me too - but the beauty of Free
> Software is that even when I'm scratching my own itch, I'm usually
> scratching someone else's itch too.

> Hope this helps,
> 

More than you could imagine :) Thanks

-Matt Daubney