would like to join Portland/Oregon team

[Bryce Harrington]

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.
> >  
> > -- 
> > Brian Murray                                                 @ubuntu.com
> > 
> 
> 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