would like to join Portland/Oregon team

[John Montgomery]

Funny you should mention that Dwight. I've actually scared up a couple
Ubuntu users here in the local area who will be volunteering with me at
our Third Thursday event next month, and more relevant to your comment,
we are going to concurrently solicit and accept donations for FreeGeek
and send whatever we collect up North to them. So there may be a common
thread forming here, and if I can get more than just two or three people
interested in seriously getting behind it in my area, perhaps it might
be worth coordinating with PLUG. The only trouble is we are almost as
geographically far from Portland as you can get and still be in the
state of Oregon, so most likely we would mirror the topics from their
meeting schedules on our own schedule, perhaps meet with them in person
a couple of times a year, and if we're lucky, entice a speaker to make
their way down here once in a while. Anyone have any thoughts on that?
As it stands with the small numbers we have down here, that is one of
the options that makes the most sense to me.

I also just wanted to comment that all of this feedback is great, and
exactly what I've been looking for since I first posted to this mailing
list a few months ago, which is an exchange of ideas, proposals,
opinions, etc., and I love it. Keep 'em coming.

Cheers - John

On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 21:35 -0700, Dwight Hubbard wrote:
> I would think it would make sense to try and coordinate with the Portland 
> Linux Users group and Freegeek.  
> 
> On Tuesday 25 August 2009 04:35:04 pm John Montgomery wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 15:50 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 03:30:04PM -0700, John Montgomery wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 15:05 -0700, Brian Murray wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 04:17:35AM -0700, David Kaplan wrote:
> > > > > > I would like to join the Portland or Oregon team. I contacted Dan
> > > > > > but I think he lives in Florida now.
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think there is much of a Portland team which is rather odd
> > > > > since there are quite a few Ubuntu developers in the Portland area.
> > > >
> > > > I agree, it is rather odd. You would expect Oregon to be a hotbed of
> > > > supporters (this is the home of the OSL, after all), but it's beginning
> > > > to seem there isn't much of a team anywhere in state these days.
> > >
> > > Or maybe it's not so odd... maybe there's so much open source / linux /
> > > ubuntu stuff going on here that the demand is already being satiated
> > > through other forms?
> > >
> > > Perhaps the trick would be to focus on specializing a bit.  I.e., in
> > > states with little open source activity, a general purpose interest
> > > group can take off, but in one like ours with lots of open source
> > > activity, it'd need to focus on one aspect, like marketing/outreach, or
> > > Ubuntu end-user training, or some such.
> > >
> > >
> > > Lately my wife and I have been upgrading our parents to Ubuntu (netbooks
> > > all around), and spending time with each giving lessons on computer
> > > usage... basic stuff like how to use google (maps are a big hit), how to
> > > use OOWriter to make documents, how to get photos off cameras, and so
> > > on.  Parental friends are getting invited over for help too...
> > >
> > > It occurs to me that there is a vast market of potential Ubuntu users
> > > for whom it really doesn't matter whether they're using Windows or
> > > Ubuntu, but rather which platform they can get some basic training on.
> > > Seems like a local user group would be an ideal vector for using such a
> > > tactic to gain converts.
> > >
> > > Bryce
> >
> > Bryce -
> >
> > I definitely agree and understand what you're saying about outreach and
> > such, and I'm certainly trying to do my part. I've pretty much decided
> > to quit worrying less about organizations as such (although it would be
> > nice to have a bit more interaction, just for the sake of exchanging
> > ideas if nothing else) and more about doing what I can do in the
> > advocacy department. I'm neither a programmer nor an artist, so I've
> > started (this month was the first one) to get out there in the local
> > community about once a month and talk to people about Ubuntu, handing
> > out CDs, offering installation assistance and support, etc. and just
> > trying to raise awareness in general here in my part of the state where
> > the concept is not quite as prevalent or popular as it is up North. It's
> > been a varied and interesting experience so far, but well worth
> > continuing in my opinion.
> >
> > -John
>