Greetings,
I have been pretty busy for the last month or two and managed to get an hour or so to-day in order to write these reports, so sorry! Preamble On 1st of January next year (around) Lower Normandy and Higher Normandy will re become just one Normandy. The administrative Capital will be ROUEN. This is good for us. (There is a development on this event below). Every year the associations have a show case and people come from towns/villages of the County in September to see what they do and how they can use the facilities. Having said that, every month the City charges a few Euros to each association in order to finance Electricity, cleaning, security et al. Event 19 September This year again, it coincided with Software Freedom Day (International event). Thanks to Douglas & Elisa, we had some posters and a few items in order not to be sort of “naked” with the thousands of visitors, the Mayor, the President of the council and other dignitaries…. I carefully picked up 3 members plus me who have experience and stamina in this type of event, Laurence, Olivier, Mike (came by train from Paris). We started early because there were a couple hundreds of associations fighting for chairs, electricty, wifi and other material. Some intelligent people set their stands overnight! This year, we wanted to hit hard because we were refused a stand at RMLL in Beauvais (The old Novell/Microsoft deal or ordeal, the way you look at it). We wanted to show our availability to the population, local, National or international without hindrance. That served us well, the politicians opened and went for a tour to visit every stand. I greeted them personally and some did walk away a DVD of SLED/S and/or a souvenir. Mike brought his 3D printing and sadly did not get it to work with openSUSE, but the laymen had no idea what was driving the 3D printer and this became an attraction which comforted me that if you do not know about open source, when wandering in the alleys, SUSE, Libre-Office, Leap etc. will not ring a bell, but seeing a sort of metallic frame on a table with 4 people in green, you want to know what’s up! This drove a lot of traffic and Mike also offered free advice for people. We had some nice encounters: a. A local association dealing exclusively with exchange of services against services, no money involved wants to trade IT from us. So when he will have no activities on Saturdays that we are in business, they will come and continue on that path with us. b. Somebody came with his desktop to get it fixed, he was running Ubuntu and had a few broken packages… Delicate situation c. We had the firemen (holding a stand as well) visiting us one by one d. Our neighbor just opposite was a lady demonstrating yoga, so IT was not her priority, nor her visitors e. Our next door neighbor was the team that runs a city secondary site and they very interested that we came to their premises to demonstrate openSUSE/SUSE…. f. We had around 26 lapel pins left and a lady came round was quite upset about wifi microwaves and while discussing with us took a handful of pins, we were dumbed because she had no computers at home … Is she going to promote us or going to sell them? g. A bit deceived with openSUSE on Raspberry PI 2, this is not trivial compared to other distributions … We distributed to professional potential users SLED/S and 100 openSUSE 13.2 DVDs that we burned ourselves over the weeks prior to SFD. Apart from that, we happily gave away stickers, SUSE key rings. We showed Tumbleweed on a dedicated machine and Leap in Beta state, openSUSE 13.2 of course, explained tens of times the various differences also with other distributions. After talking to several hundreds of visitors all day, we did indulge in liters of Coca-Cola, coffee and lunch was very frugal as we were quite busy. We all ended at my place for dinner. In a nutshell: Very positive day, met people from all around Normandy. Discovered some other associations eager to go in at the deep end with openSUSE, and our ARM version for Raspberry needs to become foolproof… We will do it again next year! Photos: not a lot, uploading soon. Event 21 October Here, this was the normal monthly SFD, but there were 6 people who made appointments for particular questions/issues. Total visitors 30 Here are the workshops (pre booked) that were held: 1. Installation of LAMP, then Wordpress and other stuff. All done OK! 2. Recovery of root password. We failed, probably because openSUSE is well armored J So reinstalled Tumbleweed, VGA card gave us grief. So, we ended with openSUSE 13.2 3. The President of an association in North East of Normandy, drove all the way to Rouen, he himself had tons of questions. The most important issue was about transition from Windows to openSUSE, then which desktop KDE/Gnome. So the full works: installation of openSUSE 13.2 and some labs with LibreOffice, Firefox, Insets on ssh, ftp… 4. A young man had some doubts about using Linux, I personally spent time with him and he will start to come every month in order to better himself. 5. A person weary of Linux wanted an installation with a dual boot *with* Windows 7 6. The best is yet to come! A guy walked in and wanted openSUSE installed, (he phoned weeks ago) He already made a backup of “My Documents” and wanted a new beginning. OpenStreetMap was present (as usual) and they trained people on using OSM. The other visitors came to have a first encounter with Linux and some wanted information. A few were also already running other flavors like Ubuntu and came to see what’s new. In a nutshell: Very rich day indeed, now getting ready for 12th December and would like to play father Xmas J Please clean/clear your drawers and send me what you can spare J What the competition is doing It seems to me that someone got in touch with me in April last year on LinkedIn and might have been monitoring the way we operate. Someoneelse came in August last year and starting to help voluntarily a bit when there were too many visitors. He started at the same time a site with SPIP and has been mingling with other LUGs in Normandy and complained that he did not get the passwords to directly input their sites. So, I found him very much involved with a particular LUG (purist of Linux) and that they were accepted at RMLL. Since then, he stopped visiting us. He was present on the stand of the other LUG last September and has a domain name now instead of hosting his SPIP site with his Internet provider. Surprise, surprise, the other LUG, Ubuntu (France) and this gentleman made a coalition and created ubuntu-rouen.org and now attempting to organize install parties in Rouen (Rouen capital of Normandy). The first one was planned last Saturday and cancelled because of the events in France. RSS issue Here is what I wrote on the 6th September, I had a couple of answers (thanks by the way) but I need that done so that I can use my talent on other matters: QUOTE “I do not master the python and I have asked for help very kindly and even opened two cases with support. They stayed opened a few months then got closed. No way to enter this RSS http://planet.opensuse.org” UNQUOTE There is enough visibility on the web, but this one is missing. @Douglas A few bits and pieces for Xmas if you can of course :D 1. * Table cloth? 2. * DVDs? 3. * Leap Tshirts? 4. * Goodies? Best wishes, Jimmy On 6 September 2015 at 13:23, <jimmypierre.rouen.fra...@gmail.com> wrote: > Sunday 06th September, 2015. > > Greetings All, > > When I asked Novell about the future of NUI, I was given Kim as contact. > Yes, I will pursue the path of French Forum with Kim on a separate thread > now and not bother Kim with the running of NUI.fr > > Having said that, I have been cc you all and was sinserely expecting someone > to come forward. The tam-tam is alive and well on Social networks. > > Three quickies: > > 1. As per attached letter, the City is asking us to pay special > attention to our stand. > > 2. I do not master the python and I have asked for help very kindly > and even opened two cases with support. They stayed opended a few months > then got closed. No way to enter this RSS http://planet.opensuse.org > > 3. We do need goodies and some form of “uniform” > > In the light of the above, I will leave it to your goodwill to make these > events for 2015 and 2016 great successes indeed. For your easy reference: > > 19 septembe rSFD - Journée Mondiale du LL > > 31 October 2015 – Monthly event > > 21 November 2015 – Monthly event > > 12 December 2015 – Monthly event > > Best wishes, > > Jimmy > > From: Kim Groneman [mailto:kgrone...@novell.com] > Sent: 06 August 2015 16:04 > To: PIERRE, Jimmy > Cc: Schweikert, Robert; mmatthews2...@gmail.com; Brown, Richard; DeMaio, > Douglas > Subject: Re: Novell Users International French Chapter > > > > Hi Jimmy, > > > > I am not in a position to help with meetings and events or marketing > material. The only thing I'm in a position to do is to create a French > online community for the French speaking user group. I can install a French > language pack on our forums and create a forum for French language > discussion. If that online community becomes viable and strong, then we > would have a chance to show management and perhaps get more attention. Is > that what you would like me to do? > > > > Kim Groneman > Micro Focus/SUSE Digital Marketing > > Forums, Wiki, & Corporate Search > > EMAIL: kgrone...@microfocus.com > PHONE: 801-861-7652 > > ________________________________ > > > >>>> Jimmy PIERRE <jimmypierre.rouen.fra...@gmail.com> 7/30/2015 4:29 AM >>> > > Hi Kim, > > I was glad to read you last week but we had a family reunion and I could not > isolate to get back to you. This obviously gave me more time for thoughts. > > > > There were some events which brought me to take contact with you. So let me > start sequentially so that we get to an understanding of where I stand. I > will copy Doug, Mary, Robert the same. > > > > There were the RMLL in Montpelier last year. NUI attended the last 5 in a > row (Including Belgium and Switzerland), so as usual, I requested some > goodies to drive down there 860 KM one way. Nothing left and also kits were > given to other ambassadors including for that event. I was told to try to > get some of these for the show. After releasing chocolate to kids, any hope > of getting some back? I then started as previous years to get hold of a > stand, no luck this time, they tried to put us with people we never did > business before. In the light of this, I gave up! And sadly, no openSUSE was > present. Sic. > > > > NUI carried out our monthly thing in the City Hall venue rooms. Business as > usual. Of course, I personally work for Corporates and evey opportunity I > get, I put SUSE and openSUSE on the table v/s other solutions (MS and/or > RedHat or whatever). > > > > First Semester of 2016 is done and we had a lot of fun, new faces, new > comers, new engagements. The City Hall closed theses activities for the > Summer Holidays, no staff and no money (as well). We did not go to RMLL 2015 > in July because again, no stand, no goodies :( > > > > A little bit of background on French culture. Last Sunday ended the Annual > Tour de France of cycling. On the 3 000 KMs journey, there are Pom Pom girls > throwing, yes throwing goodies at "spectators". But few of these > "spectators" came for the race, only for goodies. What I am trying to say, > it's not economically sound to supply goodies by thousands. > > > > Most people nowadays buy PCs that are not equipped with a DVD player. I > received an email last Sunday on a how-to. OK, I managed this one. I did > look out for getting DVDs, pressed by some professionals but bank account > would not follow. So the least that we can reasonably be able to do business > as usual is a USB stick. I had a few quotes for stands kits, but the banker > won't be happy neither . So in terms of branding, we are doing as Mac Gyver > :) > > > > Coming to a forum, if nothing exists in French, please go ahead and create > one. I will either direct link from NUI.fr or URL rewriting, but in the end > it will be found very quickly and SEO will work like a charm. > > However, we might need some training on what each product does and used for. > Either via webminars or similar. There is always room in extending the > community and build demos, insets or whatever. > > > > Marketing > > We have an old French say: To make an omelet, you need eggs! This is not > happening these days. I am not complaining, mind you. I have asked for a few > t-shirts and SUSE SLE/SLES from SUSE for months now and nothing much > happened. On the other end, I received some brochures, a handful of usb > openSUSE and a few pens, etc. from Douglas DeMaio of openSUSE. First venue > and our stock was on the minus side. > > > > Have you noticed the propaganda on Windows 10? I have been following > Marketing ideas for openSUSE on the ML. I do not know about other countries, > but in order to captivate and motivate the troups, you need something > spectacular. Leap 42.1 being *the* milestone for openSUSE, needs some > particular attention. Milestone 1 is too early for demos, but in a couple of > months, things would have moved forward a lot and it will be time to make a > *joint* party everywhere we can in France on Leap 42.1. Ubuntu, Feudora, > Mageia end others do this some informal, some very formal, but it's > broadcasted and hammered down. > > > > What I use for promotion: Twitter, newspapers, Google+, Facebook, Linkedin, > Viadeo, NUI Blog, dedicated domain (jmll.fr), OVS, Agenda du Libre, etc. The > only "media" that I have attempted to use: planet openSUSE. Despite my Ph.D, > I still do have difficulties and for the last couple of years or more, I > opened a case with the lads at openSUSE and it got sort of closed and > therefore our events never appear there! > > > > So if this gets malleable, here we go... > > > > Now, when people come to see, hear, feel Leap 42.1 what do they take away > with them? > > How to decorate the stands? > > How ambassadors will be dressed? > > Backup from openSUSE Press people as we need some contacts to promote the > event. > > What goodies will be available? > > Several programs exist for MS: MVP as Most Valuable Person and they meet > yearly. Yes, Kim, we had BrainShare. SUSECon could be an alternative for > Ambassadors? > > > > Our next dates are as follows: > > 19 Septembre 2015 - Software Freedom Day (doing big this year outside in the > City center) > > 31 Octobre 2015 > > 21 Novembre 2015 > > 12 Décembre 2015 > > > > Finally, we need a backoffice support on translation. I am bilingual so any > documentation in English or French is fine. Translation must be part of "the > package" a release and all docs in native languages. Many Corporates do get > transalation outsourced, it's cheap and they deliver the goods. > > > > Just my two cents :) > > Best wishes, > > Jimmy > > > > On 23 July 2015 at 16:00, Kim Groneman <kgrone...@novell.com> wrote: > > Hi Jimmy. > > > > I'm glad to hear your group is doing well. I wish there was another > BrainShare so I could meet up with you again. This reply may be a little > long winded, but bear with me and I think it will help you understand where > we (Micro Focus) are in relation to you. Maybe we can help each other out. > > > > HISTORY: > > > > The NUI Program, as you know, was started years ago. NetWare Users > International to Novell Users International. It never had great backing or > funding from Novell, but for a while people thought it worthwhile so threw > some resources at it. Mike Morgan, director of the Novell Corporate Events > team was the last "owner" of NUI. As Novell's user base started to decline > and Mike's funding was reduced, this was one of the things he decided to > drop completely. Novell never announced it, just walked out and left > existing NUI chapters on their own. I think Mary Mathews from Michigan still > runs a user group too (I'm copying her on this email). > > > > About 5 years ago, I emailed the chapter presidents I knew of to see what > interest there was. A few, like you, were interested in maintaining the > relationship. Unfortunately, I couldn't get anyone else inside the company > interested enough to support it at the time. > > > > COMMUNITY STATUS TODAY: > > > > When TAG merged with Micro Focus, the management expressed interest in > giving a little more support to "community". To that end, they created a > community focused group of employees in the Marketing organization. I manage > our online support forums. There are a couple of guys that manage our social > media accounts. A gal that manages the Cool Solutions stuff. A guy that runs > our Academic focused community. We don't have a single community manager, > but we've all been brought together as a team to establish and foster > community. As Micro Focus management is making valiant efforts to improve > things for customers and at the company, we're still at a point of tight > budgets and personnel. What I'm hearing is that it may take a couple of > years before we're headed in the direction we want to go. The shareholders > believe in the vision thank goodness! > > > > OK, LET'S TALK ABOUT YOUR NUI CHAPTER > > > > First of all, I'd like you to tell me what you'd like to see happen. I'm not > in any position to help you out a lot but I'm willing to help you where I > can. If you look at the Novell forums at http://forums.novell.com you'll see > I'm trying to put together communities of vertical markets (government, > healthcare, small business, etc.) That's still in it's infancy and > struggling, for good reason and probably will continue to struggle until we > can combine all Micro Focus community into one location, which is planned. > > > > One thing I could do for you immediately is create a private forum for your > group. A place for French speaking users of Micro Focus products. Forums are > searchable, sticky, and can be subscribed to so you get email notification > of discussions. I don't know if that's something you'd be interested in or > not. Another thing that could be done is to create a wiki sub page on > http://wiki.novell.com for you to use to store information. > > > > We have a good working academic focused community and I've found that once > such a community gets established, that community has clout with the > company. Our executive management are willing to listen to the voice of a > strong community, they're just not ready to throw a lot of resources at it > right now. > > > > My personal opinion is that it once made a lot of sense to have just local > community groups. I think with technology and the value in multiple heads, > it now makes more sense to focus more on idea, industry, or language based > community groups. That's not to say that local groups aren't of value, they > are. I think they would work better as part of a larger focus group though. > > > > I'm kind of rambling here, but again, let me know what you would like to see > happen and I'll see if I/we can do anything to help. I have no idea the > infrastructure you have going and what I'm offering may not even be needed. > > > > Kim Groneman > Micro Focus/SUSE Digital Marketing > > Forums, Wiki, & Corporate Search > > EMAIL: kgrone...@microfocus.com > PHONE: 801-861-7652 > > ________________________________ > > > >>>> Jimmy PIERRE <jimmypierre.rouen.fra...@gmail.com> 7/23/2015 3:21 AM >>> > > Greetings, > > Our association NUI.fr founded in 2001 is still doing fine. > > We were wondering how we can fit in the picture liaising with > MICROFOCUS Community Manager. > > We operate on a voluntary basis, that is, members buy cakes, > tea/coffee/soft drinks at our venues (monthly). > > If NUI is not convenient as name, do you have any suggestions? And, as > NUI seems to have been dissolved, maybe all agreement with Novell are > off now :( > > > I am totally bilingual and would love to have a quick chat with you. > > Best wishes, > Jimmy Pierre > President > NUI.fr > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscr...@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+ow...@opensuse.org
