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
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