Great advice, Mel! 1. Bi-weekly meetup is less stressful, also give us more time to prepare for the presentation (if any). I believe that it is more important to keep the program going at a consistent pace that everyone can sustain. 2. Another good idea is to have different session: presentation, Q&A, troubleshooting (people have trouble with their systems can bring to us). 3. Agree with the minimal people setup too.
IMHO, to reach the general public we have to take the 'geek' out. Stop thinking about distros, technology, programming, etc. because: 1. There are already people/groups working hard on that 2. We will only draw more geeks, not general public Instead, think of what our target users want/need to know. Using FB? We can show you how to protect your privacy. Using IE? We can show you how to surf faster with Chrome or do more with Firefox. Want to do photo editing? You don't have to be a pirate by sticking to PhotoShop, there _are_ alternatives. The problem I see is the "Now What?" after installing linux. I've seen cases people move back to Windows because they need to do word processing, spreadsheet, photo editing, listen to music and there is no one to show them how to do it on their free OS. This is perhaps one of the hardest areas to tackle. Canonical, with all the money spent, achieved a certain degree of success. What a bunch of geeks can do with limited fund, only time will tell :). Wikey On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 4:53 AM, Meling Mudin <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Wikey, >> >> To your question: >> >> I think the nature of the meetup should (for now) be primarily about >> first-mile user-education, so installation and troubleshooting queries about >> Ubuntu would take priority. >> Of course, if there's a mailing list/forum/FB group (I definitely prefer >> the latter), people can project in advance what they want to discuss - and >> then go get their own coffee table during the weekly meeting - no problems >> there. If somehow we have enough attendees that we get at at least one party >> going off to discuss user-land kernel hacks in a corner - I think it'd be an >> over-achievement already. > > Sorry to chime in an old topic, but I rarely read the list. Here's my > thoughts, based entirely on my experience running HSKL. > > Weekly meeting is good, but it's too frequent. Best is bi-weekly. People > tend to just linger around and not do anything productive if they 'feel' > compelled to meet every week. Over time, the crowd will become less and less > and disinterested. > Expecting people to project in advance what to ask often fails in the long > run. As a community leader (if you want to be one), you have to decide the > topic for every meetup (at least for the first few meetups), prepare the > materials, control the meetup (e.g. 30 mins of presentation, 10 mins of Q&A, > 30 mins of hands-on, etc). Consistency, discipline and focus is the key to a > successful meetup. > Focus on "people". Who is your target? Non-geeks? That term is just too > broad. Make it specific. How about primary/secondary school students? If you > focus on specific people, you will see them coming through the door, and you > will feel glad. It gives you motivation. It drives you to do what you want > to do, and achieve what you want to achieve. It makes you want to go the > school and beg the headmaster/mistress an hour of school time so that you > preach Ubuntu. They're your drugs. Goals are more attainable if they're > concise. >> >> And yes, I completely imagined this being in a public location for ease of >> access - also, it's good for branding and visibility (i.e. spreading the >> meme, and getting it to go viral). > > If you meant something visible like a coffee shop, then HSKL is not one. But > HSKL will always be there for the community to use. >> >> This is basically about fixing the last-mile of open-source software >> propagation. Most people don't get into FOSS because they're not geeky >> enough by nature - so why don't we help them by meeting up face to face and >> de-geeking the technology a little bit? > > Focus on primary/secondary school students. Why students: for the simple > reason that they are the most free to choose what they want to use in terms > of operating system. Professionals for example, don't really care much > because they use what their company provides, and most likely it's > some proprietary software, unless their work environment is otherwise. > Open source is not about being geeky or non-geeky. It's about freedom to > choose. >> >> "I am interested in helping non-geeks with Ubuntu, for free" Sheet (once >> we hit 15 people, I'll set up the FB page): > > I don't believe in starting something only when you get enough people. I > think the minimum number of people you need is 2. When I started HSKL, we > got a lot of interests. 15-20 people attended the meetings. So I started > delegating. But nothing happened for a good 6 or 7 months. So I started > again, just me and another guy. No meetings, no arguments over where to > rent, no consensus, no votes - just a "get that goddamn thing off the > ground" attitude. And another one helped. And another. And finally a good > one month before renting a space, we have 30+ pledges - people who willingly > donated their money because they know that you're doing it for the greater > good. > Best of luck, > --mel > > > _______________________________________________ > general mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.foss.org.my/mailman/listinfo/general > > _______________________________________________ general mailing list [email protected] http://lists.foss.org.my/mailman/listinfo/general
