[aklug] Re: FOSS users group

barsalou said, on 03/09/2011 11:29 PM:
> Quoting Dale Rooney <dale.rooney@gmail.com>:
>
>> Well then I guess the next question is, who wants to get involved in
>> promoting FOSS out in the community. I feel we need to be more active in
>> reaching out to computer users in general by posting flyers, handing out
>> discs and perhaps holding get-togethers in coffee shops to demonstrate
>> software and answer questions.
>> Who's up for that?
>>
>> Dale
>
> This seems like a fantastic idea. Anyone else?

Sounds great - with our limited cycles, we need to home in on some solid
next actions with high leverage to make this happen.

I see the big barriers to FOSS entry for Windows folks as:

* Fear of breaking existing systems and processes.
* Fear of breaking something with the *new* system.
* Lack of confidence that the same activities are possible with FOSS.

The most powerful way I know of to help people learn and transition is
to have the "safety net" of their existing system and processes intact,
and a way to put their "learning" system back the way it was if they
shoot themselves in the foot.

So next actions might be:

* Call for older laptops, and a mechanism for checking them in and out
on Fridays, perhaps by having someone leave a deposit.

* Ask for volunteers to put appropriate distros on them, and come up
with a "restore" partition method that works similar to Dell's.

* Prepare a couple of one pager "Rosetta Stone" docs with "here's how
you do it in Windows, and here's how you do the same thing in Ubuntu",
and "here's how to put your system back the way it was" and "So you have
a spare system, here's how to FOSS-ify it the AKLUG way."

In this way, by having a few "learning" systems at the ready to loan,
and make it easy for folks to create their own, both such that they can
be easily be reset back to the "AKLUG factory defaults", we lower those
barriers.

Royce
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Received on Mon Mar 14 07:50:43 2011