Category: Local Community

LoCo Advocacy Events

by doctormo

As a local community group we have to decide what events it’s best to invest our time and energy into making sure we can do full on advocacy and which events are basically internal computer geek socials.

Let me explain, when the BLU (Boston Linux User Group) holds their annual Summer BBQ; there isn’t much point in 20 Ubuntu geeks turning up with CDs and flyers. The same goes for the FSF Software Freedom Day or the Boston Gnome Summit or a PyCon etc, all these events are internal computer geek driven and the people who attend really don’t need information or CDs to get them into Ubuntu. Chances are they’re already into or not into Ubuntu. But it is easy to turn up for social events, you can give away lots of CDs to people who already know about Ubuntu that way and they’re great places to get to know the wider network of people in the computer communities.

I think some of the best advocacy events though are when we step a little further outside out boundaries into other communities that have little or nothing to do with computers. The PiCon event last year was a success because it was a bunch of Maths and Science geeks, just not computer geeks. They’d heard every Anime or Manga and had come for Cory Doctorow (SciFi writer) and Randall Munroe (XKCD), but we could relate and lots of people were interested and informed about what Ubuntu was and how powerful it was while there because we held a table with demo machines, CDs and volunteers.

That’s the kind of external advocacy event I’d like to be doing more of in our Local Community. Places where normal people from other communities can get to know about what we’re all about. Hopefully at next year’s Anime convention we’ll be able to get a booth proper and be able to hold fort, this year we only managed a small contingent with CDs and Ubunchu Managa prints.

What do other LoCo groups think about attending externally organised events?

Tuesday in Massachusetts

by doctormo

It’s Tuesday evening in Boston and like always we have our teaching session were we teach fresh faced non-technical users off the street what Ubuntu is and how it works on the Desktop.

Today was different though, we’re putting in a PXE server and a host of other upgrades for the community center where we conduct our classes. This is to allow us to teach effectively and manage the technology that we teach with. I put out a call to arms onto our Local Community mailing list in hope that some more faces would appear and take on some of the teaching tasks since it was going to be a busy evening just with the new tech.

Nine LoCo people came to help (including me) and I’d just like to shout out how grateful I am for all their help, these are some of the Massachusett’s Local Community Heros:

  • Daniel Hollocher
  • Danny Piccirillo
  • James Gray
  • Mike Rushton
  • Mike Terry
  • Nicolas Valcarcel
  • Sara Abbot
  • Yuriy Kozlov

We have such an awesome community spirit and despite some teething trouble with the new server, it doesn’t diminish the dedication of our local community members. We managed to also discuss some great new things we can be doing to increase publicity and do more events, something that having a large number of members present really helps with.

Tomorrow I will hopefully post the sys-admin video, sorry about the delay fokes, post-production issues with propritary Apple software (Final Cut Pro bleh) which I don’t use, but my producer/wife does. I may end up doing it in blender but howtos have been light on finer details about video editing in blender.

But besides the video, the physical teaching session will go ahead as planned and hand out sheets and presentation materials are all written, hopefully I’ll get into the swing of course writing as the weeks roll by.

Ubuntu Massachusetts, over and out.