[UbuntuDallas] Arlington Meetup Summarized

[JJNova]

Greetings mailing list subscribers,

On Saturday, December 5th (yesterday), a number of individuals came 
together to sit in on a meeting organized by Daniel Stone that took 
place in Arlington. Consider this account to be the Gospel of JJ, as 
it's my documentation of what happened. First, I would like to thank 
everyone that showed up. The majority of the people being from our area, 
but would also like to recognize Justin from Waco, Drew from Tyler, Matt 
from Duncanville and Daniel from Longview. Also Geoffrey Vanstone from 
Midlothian, mostly because I have no clue where that is from. I tried to 
document the event on the Ubuntu Dallas Identi.ca page, though I 
probably failed. http://identi.ca/group/udt

Starting at 1pm, most of the afternoon was open discussion with a 
general agenda of what should be discussed. As I did not put on this 
event, I took a seat and participated when there was something for me to 
say. Which was a lot more often than anyone would have liked.

Introductions were done, with each person in attendance stating who they 
were and what they do. Initially, there were 7 people in attendance, but 
as time went by the count rose exponentially to 13. Daniel Stone 
introduced his idea oif the New User Experience Project (which I refer 
to as NUX. Nothing official). From what I understand, it's a project 
which focuses on the transitional user from WIndows to Ubuntu. 
Differentiating from the Beginners Team and the Absolute Beginners forum 
on Ubuntuforums.org in that it will have simplistic documenttion, such 
as instructions in written word as well as video tutorials. The example 
given from Mr. Stone is that as a transitional user, you get a lot of 
information on how to do something (open terminal and type *%^$&$^#) 
without a patient source to explain each step ("where the *%$& is 
terminal?").

The project shouldn't be incredibly difficult to create, but will take 
some dedicated people to maintain. GTKRecordMyDesktop was suggested as 
an example of how a tutorial could be recorded for showcasing menial 
tasks. I suggested using DailyMotion as a hosting/streaming service as 
opposed to YouTube, since Flash isn't installed on a default Ubuntu 
install and DailyMotion uses HTML5 video tags to stream OGG Theora 
content through their player. If you are a beginner, you'd probably not 
have Flash figured out from the get-go. If you are interested, please 
get in contact with Daniel (DailyStruggle).

Discussion moved to Texas Team. The Pros being open communication 
between teams as well as focusing team member to projects in which they 
would be interested or able to be useful. A hub for finding answers from 
a local source, where someone might be able to physically demonstrate 
solutions to hardware, software, or distribution flavor specific 
problems. Another benefit being discussed is that it brings more people 
to the table to come up with alternative solutions, specifically in case 
one didn't perform. All of these are already possible through the 
current TexasTeam acting as it does. When we (DallasTeam) started 
TexasTeam in 2007, that was it's sole purpose, to keep teams 
communicating and pointing users thier closest group of companions based 
on locality.

Cigarette break, which is awesome for me. At this time, I cannot say 
what was discussed inside by the non-smoking portion of the group, but I 
can say that the smokers discussed OpenGL, DirectX (Direct3D), 
Tremulous, Halo, Guild Wars.... ok pretty much video games in general. 
Tried to sway some in attendance to start a LoCo out in the Tyler 
region. GO GO GO!

After we went back inside, we discussed New User Experience (NUX) some 
more. There was some confusion on what the project should focus on 
becoming, and what medium would best reflect the nature of the project. 
This is actually where a more in-depth conversation took place regarding 
if it should be a website, compilation of videos, or a package that 
would be additional to ubuntu which could add helpful functionality. The 
final plan, as far as I could tell, was to host a website that helped 
transitional users adapt after already making the jump. Once again, I 
harp on the benefit of using DailyMotion, as it will run videos out of 
the box.

I wanted to get everyone talking about projects they are involved in, 
which, unfortunately, seemed not many people were. I mentioned OCAM, and 
this opened up the discussion with people sharing stories about how 
their local school district has been making changes that involve a more 
'free' migration. For instance, Vauge (I'm sorry, I think your name was 
Alan) recalled how his daughter is to use OpenOffice for her homework 
assignments. This has led to all of her friend (could be 3, could be 17) 
to use free software, and, conveniently, request that Vauge install 
Ubuntu on their machines! SUCCESS DFW! I found this to be awesome. Just, 
awesome.

Here is where things get confusing, as I started being involved in side 
conversations and disengaged with the main portion of the meeting. Don't 
judge me, this is the Gospel According to JJ. If you disagree, go write 
your own account of what happened. Actually, I got to talk and discuss 
topics with people in our area. The group started to separate into a 
bunch of side conversations, and these were interesting as we got to 
tell stories and share our (usually very common) complaints. Alfred, 
from Keller, is running Xubuntu on his laptop, and it's working 
beautifully. This is in stark contrast to how Ubuntu was running. Too 
bad we weren't in contact with each other sooner, as I try to recommend 
Xubuntu to everyone.

The meeting died out, and many people went home. Justin (from Waco), 
Aaron (from Weatherford), and I hung out discussing open source, 
projects, and general crap until 7pm, when we finally decided to make 
our trek's back to our regions. Once again, thanks to those who showed 
up. And I want to verify that those who showed up to this meeting, but 
not the Dallas meetings, are jerks. Ha ha. Good day everyone.