[Malvern] LUG Up Front

[Ian Pascoe]

Hi all

Following on from a discussion held at the GMH a couple of months ago, it
has been suggested that we bring FOS and Linux to the masses.  So we are
looking to some of you lot to help us with this most noble of causes!

What we are looking for is just a little something to start off with that
shows off your experiences with using FOS, why you chose FOS as opposed to
proprietry  software, or even, as Phil has, how to use it.

If you've never done presenting before this is a real scary thing to do, so
the easiest thing I've come up with is for us to dry run the presentations
either at a LUG meeting, or in front of a few especially selected people.
Anyone got any questions on how to do presentations, give me a shout as this
type of stand up stuff I do quite regularly at work.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, I'll leave it to the regular core members
of the LUG and wash my hands of the complete idea.  Don't!  There is a great
deal of potential to preaching the word and if you can get the confidence to
go along with the presentation, you might even find it's got life changing
potential.

Phil has already done some initial enquiries, quite accidentally as it
happened, to a couple of the local schools and they almost bit his hand off,
so the audience is there.

So, what do you need to do?  Firstly don't ignore this mail - I know, I know
I'm laying it on thick but I really think this is a good idea.

Next, look at the way you use FOS / Linux.

You may use it for a desktop only, that's fine so tell us why you chose the
desktop and distro you did and how you got there.

Maybe you use it professionally for web building / hosting, or running
networks and servers.  That's fine too as this is a bit more techy and will
appeal to a different type of audience.

It doesn't matter, just think about it.  To give you some more ideas, some
of the suggestions from last night were:

- how to and why use the command line
- BASH and simple command line commands
- security and backups
- GIMP 2

And putting my neck on the proverbial chopping block I have decided to do
something on Assistive Technologies and the disabled as it's something I
know about!

All this being said, we do have the fallback of asking guest speakers to
come along from other LUGs and other FOS groups like the Perlmongers, UK
Ubuntu etc, but why should we rely totally on  these guys when we've got
such a diverse range of people and interests within the group.

OK, normal service now resumes.

Ian