[Wiltshire] Anyone near Melksham?

[David Fletcher]

On Saturday 09 Oct 2010, Philip Vossler wrote:
> Are there any LUG members at all close to Melksham?  I'd like to
> run an install day here in Melksham - maybe at the old Wiltshire
> College Campus (if I can gain access), or possibly at the company I
> work for. Hopefully this would be the start of a regular group that
> are into hacking hardware and Linux (not quite a LUG). I know very few
> people in the area and am keen to meet like minded engineers that
> would like to take technology into the community.
> 
> I need a few people to form a core group and hatch a solid proposal
> before going public with the idea.
> 
> Any comments or suggestions very welcome!
> 

I've helped with one of these before, and thinking about it now, what I reckon 
would be a good thing would be more of an install season rather than an 
install day. It would involve much more of a commitment from the community, 
so I'm putting the idea forward to see what you all think.

In my opinion, one day is not enough to get a windows user who's never seen 
Linux to bring along a computer, get a distribution installed, become 
sufficiently familiar and go away again able to use it. It would be far more 
valuable to have an introduction day so that anybody interested can come 
along and talk to the people involved, get some level of comfort and trust 
with them, talk about how they want to migrate, and go away with some sort of 
an action plan. For instance it might suit people better to do what I do and 
install a hard drive caddy so that different systems can be installed on 
completely separate hard drives. In which case they could go away with part 
numbers to purchase from ebay etc. then come back with everything ready to go 
next time. Others might come along with hardware that's simply too old and 
slow for the job, in which case we might be able to suggest upgrades of 
motherboards etc. that have been tried and tested by ourselves and are known 
to work.

So, maybe three sessions at two week intervals?

Session 1 - Introduction, demonstration and technical requirements
Session 2 - Installation
Session 3 - Follow up for answering queries and problems

I think that if we could hold peoples' attention for a period like this we 
would be more likely to get them to continue attending meetings. With a 
properly structured series of sessions including defined goals at each stage 
we would give a much more professional appearance and improve our chances of 
encouraging involvement in the first place.

What do you all think of this?

Dave