[dundee] Abertay Linux Meeting - 16th August 2007 – Preparation for freshers fair - Important

[Arron M Finnon]

Abertay Linux Meeting - 16th August 2007 – Preparation for freshers
fair 


As discussed at the meeting last night, this message is intended to be a
general outline of the ideas discussed and is designed for people to
lend their ideas to the process in an open manner. 

Freshers fair is about 4 weeks away, and it is an ideal opportunity to
swell the numbers of both the Linux Society and the TLUG + mailing list,
it is thought that a majority of those that sign up will be new to the
world of *nix and FLOSS.

We will have a stand at the next freshers fair and they should be a
rather large footfall over the day, it was discussed having a few
systems running different Linux distro's to show the power of *nix such
as Paul Lancaster's Amiga running Linux, and a Pentium 300 running Puppy
Linux to demonstrate Linux can revive older machines. It was also
discussed that a machine running Beryl (compiz-fusion or whatever they
call the bonny graphic thingy now) would also be appropriate as well. We
also have the potential to have PS3 running Linux as well to demonstrate
to students that they can turn there games console into a Supercomputer
(well when i say super computer ii mean a machine with 8 processors),
which i also think will be very popular. Lee Hughes also discussed an
idea of using two machines with OLPC's user interface Sugar. It is hoped
that the display will draw a lot of attention and give us a chance to
canvas new users. 

It was also discussed that some disc's should be burnt with a mix of
distro's to give away, Linux Mint as it generally works out of the box
in the context of codec's and WiFi support, Ubuntu which kinda speaks
for it self at event's like this with maybe a mix of *buntu's such as
(k)buntu and maybe (x)buntu. Also maybe some Fedora's and Mandriva's as
well. Kris Findlay also came up with an idea some weeks ago about making
system rescue disc's on credit card sized Cd's, the idea being that
someone can put it in the wallet and when there machine dies they
remember that they have this disc in their wallet that can get their
files of their system, of course it will have a sticker on it with
Abertay Linux Society info on it. Also with the Credit card sized disc's
maybe a net install Debian as well. The idea was to copy the disc's on
to blank Cd's and that we design a CD sticker with Abertay Linux Society
- www.abertaylinuxsociety.com – Distro Name – email contact address –
TayLUG mailing list https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dundee


It was also disscussed that a few how-to handout's would be useful in
both the context of the freshers fair and much needed content for the
web site which is due to go live before freshers fair. The idea raised
was to make a generic how-to guide that would show people how to install
a Linux system rather than Distro specific how-to guide i.e. talking
through boot partition with grub, home partition and root partition sort
of thing. Also some content on the political side of free software, such
as the dangers of vendor lock in, Trusted Computer Platform, One Laptop
Per Child project, Free-BIOS project, Open Source software education.

Attila (our new society sectary, and welcome aboard) had a fantastic
idea of translating our welcome sign into different languages especially
in to Chinese and Hindi as a Abertay has an ever increasing amount of
international students from china and India, but i imagine polish
wouldn't go a miss either. Also Attila mentioned contact Novell and
asking for some form of sponsorship for the society as well, which on a
personal note i think to be a great idea.

Abertay Linux Society web site is in desperate need of some content
written, and i have commented on this at numerous meetings, it seems
that at the moment there is dual use for any content written for both
the site and the freshers fair handout's.

It was also disscussed that those working on the stall at freshers fair
should at least have T-shirts for the society, but that this too could
be a fund raising idea as well. At the university there is a society
that has a very popular collection of top's that say A.S.S (Abertay
Snowboard Society), so in the spirit of that we thought that maybe we
could have A/S/L t-shirts (Abertay Society for Linux).


So here comes the crunch at the moment the society membership is about
35-40 members, and if we have a successful freshers fair we could easily
double that if not take it into triple figures. If that happens not only
does it mean that we will have a massive society which hopefully will
attract more guest speakers, but we will also have one of the most
active groups in Scotland (and dare i say if we have nearly a 100
members meeting once a fortnight maybe one of the biggest Linux groups
in Scotland). It also means that our budget to hold events will by
virtue be bigger. It was disscussed that it would be opportunity wasted
if it comes to freshers fair and all we have is a few disc's, and the
web site no where near done as there is no content there.

So volunteers for a number of different job's is needed, and everyone
can help out in there own way as well. First and foremost some how-to
guides need to be written, if you don't want to do one on setting up a
*nix system then there is a need for other one, and they don't need to
be so complicated, they could be as simple as setting Evolution up with
GoogleMail and Exchange server (our uni web-mail is exchange and you can
use evolution to send and receive your Uni emails) which means that we
have something more for the site and something to handout as well. If
there are any graphically minded people out there then we could do with
some people working on designing some more graphic we have one logo and
it's okay but far form exciting and it would be nice if some one had
ideas for T-Shirt design as well.

So if people can discuss this either through the TayLUG mailing list or
via emails so that we can get a wider view of ideas what people think
new users would like to see at freshers fair or any way that they can
help out.  If you are about to start work on something could you drop me
a line so i know what people are doing and that there is no working
being duplicated.

I thank you all in advance for you assistance with this

Arron M Finnon

President 

Abertay Linux Society

0605909 at abertay.ac.uk
afinnon at googlemail.com
arron.finnon at hotmail.co.uk
Skype - finux1