[Ubuntu Chicago] Meeting proposal

[Richard A. Johnson]

On Wednesday 30 January 2008, Patrick Green wrote:
[...]

I am happy seeing you guys take off and I wish you the best with this, and of 
course if I can help out in any way, please do not hesitate to ask.

| 1) The Ubuntu Desktop Classroom.
|
| 2) The Ubuntu Classroom Except for Servers:
|
| This project would be the same idea of the Ubuntu Classroom but focus
| more on setting up basic servers.
| - Teach How-to Setup LAMP
| - Drupal
| - Wordpress
| - Basic Security

I wouldn't do the same idea as the Ubuntu Classroom, because that hasn't worked 
well recently. Myself and a couple of others started the project a couple of 
years ago and it was rockin'. Recently everyone has been to busy. Taking the 
concept is fine, but you guys can obviously do much better!

| 3) Work with Free Geek Chicago

This is a great idea! I was working on something similar 2 years ago, but just 
didn't have the time nor the manpower to really carry forward with it, 
hopefully you can hit both in the head with this.

| 4) Hold Installfests

In the past 4 years in the Chicagoland area, Install Fests have brought the same 
group together every time. I would say that if you are going to do install 
fests, don't do them in conjunction with a LUG event at all. The only way I can 
see an install fest being successful these days is if you take it to the 
people. What I mean is going to a college campus on heavily trafficked days. No 
Saturday's or Sunday's because students don't want to be there then. Weekends 
have proven to be no good for install fests. The best install fests I have ever 
seen in my 10+ years in the Linux/Free Software community were at the College 
of DuPage, yes the CODLUG, back when the Computer Show used to be there. It was 
nothing to get 50+ people to show up every month, and 50 different people to 
say the less. In the past year we have taken out articles in the Chicago 
Tribune, the Daily Herald, as well as local community papers for install fests, 
and none of them worked. The only thing I haven't tried is getting space at say 
the mall during a weekend, setting up a booth and attracting people. Something 
has to be done differently in this arena for it to work, otherwise you will get 
the Chicago LoCo people and other geeks who only show up to socialize.

| 5) Advocate Ubuntu to Local Government

Only one local representative listened to me about this. Last year, in 
association with Canonical and other Linux distributions, we started a campaign 
to target the local government and in the Chicagoland area, we sent out over 
1,000 letters to local, high-ranking, government officials. To be honest, I 
think manchicken is the one who started the buzz on this last year. Out of 
those 1,000 letters, 1 replied positively, while the other ones who did 
respond, let us know that the Illinois government has a new multi-million 
dollar contract with Microsoft for some time to come (can anyone say earmarks 
up the arse for this one?). This is the contract that is fueling some of the 
new Microsoft advertisements that you can find on their website as well as on 
TV. I would strike the government at this time, and go for educational 
institutions. Right now, the educational funding in this state is at its all 
time lowest, so "free" or "damn close to free" is music to their ears if 
marketed correctly. Word of the wise on this one, go directly for the board and 
not their IT people. IT people are typically idiots who breathe Windows and 
cuss Linux.

Now here is a word of encouragement, we were fundamental in seeing the DuPage 
Country Government Center(s) take in Linux, in this case both Ubuntu and 
Kubuntu. If you go into the DuPage County offices, take a look at their kiosks 
they have spread around, if the color schemes look familiar (brown or blue), 
then you know it is running one of the two. The City of Chicago is Red Hat, and 
they have a great long standing contract with them. Cook County on the other 
hand is still using some old systems. You will actually still find quite a few 
Windows 98 machines in some of the Cook County offices. So strap on your mafia 
face, write up a fake contract, and get to advocating :p

| These are just some project ideas I have had in my head for awhile.  I
| wish you all the best of luck with all future projects and hope I can
| help out whenever possible.

If you need any help, I am still here. Going to be quite busy in the next few 
months with talks at Flourish, Penguicon, Ohio Linux Fest, Ubuntu Live, and 
some others. So in between school, working, and talking, I should have some 
free time to help you all out with :)

-- 
Richard A. Johnson
nixternal at kubuntu.org
GPG Key: 0x2E2C0124
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