[Ubuntu Chicago] Interest in Joining Ubuntu Chicago Team

[Wally Valters]

Now that you mention it Rich :))

I think we need to take a little bit of the direction Manchicken has with
his outings at local shops / gathering areas.  Although I would prefer
something a little closer to home :)

LUG / Meetings are good ways to get the word out, but you are going to get
very few absolute new users.  Most of those attendees will already be
familiar with linux, and be checking into a new distro etc.  If we can get
that casual user to start looking into Ubuntu I think they will change over
if it can provide what they need.

The whole "Free as in freedom not free as in beer" means nothing to the
average user.  All they want is a machine that can do what they want to.  We
need to show them that with free software you can do all those things.  Then
we need to step up and help train them.  If you can show them how to use
openoffice, Gimp / Digikam or whatever, they will be sold.  I have my
parents trying Ubuntu, and all it took was a few hours over a few weeks
showing them what they could do.

No cost software, free help, and pretty much no more worrying about viruses
etc...  they will love it.  Not to mention that their hardware will be
effective for longer.

All we need is a machine or two showing that you can edit word and excel
documents, do email, digital picture manipulation, and do it all for
free...  you would get a lot of peoples interest.

So I think we have a mission, I think it can be better executed though.  I
am going to try

On 10/6/07, Richard A. Johnson <nixternal at kubuntu.org> wrote:
>
> On Saturday 06 October 2007, Josh Siegel wrote:
> | On 10/1/07, Mike TRIBE! <info at whosinyours.net> wrote:
> | >   Any information you can provide would be appreciated.
> |
> | You are welcome to join but to be honest, other then social/install
> events,
> | the "team" has not found a "mission" yet...
>
> Umm, have you been to any of our meetings?  How about the LUG
> collaboration
> that we do? How about working closing with conferences such as Flourish
> and
> hopefully a future ChiCon?
>
> Our mission is simple, advocate and support locally Ubuntu. 90% of us on
> this
> list meet quite a few times a year and do just that, and there are a
> select
> few that work really hard at this. The ML isn't our only mode of
> communications, we also have an IRC channel where a lot of us hang out and
> work out ideas. There are quite a few of us who are developers and
> actually
> get requested to come in an talk about Ubuntu, the community, development
> and
> more. Every other month we have been holding meetings. We do one in the
> city,
> usually in conjunction with the Chicago GLUG or with the UIC ACM/LUG, and
> we
> do one in the suburbs at the College of DuPage in collaboration with
> CoDLUG.
>
> Considering this group has probably handed over anywhere between 2500 and
> 5000
> CDs in the past year and a half speaks highly of the effort with this
> team.
> Out of the 90 members on LP, there are only about 10 of us who have put in
> a
> lot of hard work on our free time.
>
> So, this team has had a mission since day one, so saying we haven't found
> it
> is rather disappointing. If you have any better ideas than social/install
> events, in which have made us one of the more popular and requested groups
> in
> Chicago, we would love to hear it. We are open for anything that is of
> course
> legal.
>
> --
> Richard A. Johnson
> nixternal at kubuntu.org
> GPG Key: 0x2E2C0124
>
> --
> Ubuntu-us-chicago mailing list
> Ubuntu-us-chicago at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-chicago
>
>
>
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