The last time we had an installfest was in October. Myself, I'd never seen a PLUG installfest before that last one. Despite our marketing efforts being limited to these mailing lists and (I think) an AzTech listing, and despite such a sparse recurrence, we had an excellent showing of new faces. This tells me that the community is downright hungry for installfests. What concert ever emits such a faint peep and fills their house? Curiosity about Linux grows every day, and more business and government agencies are turning to Linux for solutions. Other major cities in America hold installfests at least monthly. We need to hold monthly installfests. I'd like to pick up the torch for organizing and marketing these monthly installfests. I picked the last Saturday of the month, as it's a convenient day for most to attend an all-day event, it distributes well among the county's other Linux, AzTech, and the cities' Chamber of Commerce meetings, and the Stammtisch will always be before the installfest, which would be a springboard for the organizers and volunteers. I've already called Charles Braffett about reserving the University of Advancing Technology area. He said we are very welcome to come! Volunteers: I think we all know what is needed for installfests on the technical side, and last time we had overwhelming support, so I'm not going to worry about this one bit. Just tell us what you're bringing, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I'll watch plug-discuss and collect a list, and relay the list back here. That way any vacuums will be seen and filled. We will need several people to sign up specifically to be at the installfest at 9am, an hour before the official start; I'll be one of those. Last time food magically showed up, and a lot more than what Hans's family baked: what happened? I think we should probably put a coffee can somewhere, and at 13:00 take whatever is in there and have a food run. Other than that, whatever happens happens! We also had great support for demos and tons of ideas about what to 'do' at the installfest. Bring them on. However, be careful what you ask for, you might get it! :-) I'm going to deliberately reply to this list to those ideas with a feature-itis mentality. I'm as guilty as the next hacker of wanting to conquer the world in one installfest, but here, this time, I'm not only going to bite my tounge, I'm going to be a fuddy-duddy. First, you need support, space, time, and interest before a Cool Thing[TM] is worth doing. But most importantly, the primary goal, I think, needs to be gaining momentum for monthly recurrence, and to roll out new desktops to people who have never seen Linux before. For the users the benefit is obvious, they always know they can show up the last Saturday of any month for any kind of help. For us, recurrence reduces the pressure and makes us more effective. Forget something? Do it next time. Didn't finish that Dec Alpha install after six hours? There's always next time. Once you set up that Cool Thing[TM], and see people like it and need it, it's already ready for next time. Of course, hackers wouldn't come if they didn't get a treat as well, so yes, extra-nerdy demos need to happen as well! Bring on those ideas. I'm not saying I won't accept them, just be forwarned I'm going to act like I'm hard to please :-) I want to stress, again, to listen to the needs of the n00bs, and find opportunities to provide. Those opportunities will not be in short supply, and it's a lot easier to satisfy those needs next month rather than anticipate them all beforehand. For now, we will just be available as volunteers to do one-on-one work. But while you're working, look for common threads, and the next installfest we'll refine it. Okay, let's have ourselves an installfest! -- --Alexander --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss