[sf-lug] SF out-reach for FOSS

[Christian Einfeldt]

hi,

I thought I would update this about our progress in showing FOSS to new
users.  The school continues to hum forward with Linux for students, but the
teachers will remain with Windows for a long time, because the school
partnered with several other Bay Area schools to get tech support, and sadly
they chose a company that focuses on Windows.  Plus, the principal really
hates computers, and does not want to learn anything new, nor does she want
her teachers to learn anything new.  The teachers all work 12 hour days to
begin with, and so learning new computer technology is not something that
the principal has room in her life for.  Sad but true.  But most of the
student facing technology is now FOSS.

We have recently contacted a girls' after-school empowerment program located
in the SOMA district, and we have delivered a PClinuxOS box to them.  I know
that Asheesh and maybe a few others don't like PClos, but I chose it because
it is really simple to use and it looks like Microsoft Windows and it is
pretty to look at.  I am not married to PClos, though, of course, and any
distro that they like is okay with me.  This box is one of the newer
computers that has come from James Burgett of the ACCRC.org, and so thanks
to James for that!  This girls' program is evaluating whether they like FOSS
or not, and maybe they will reject it, who knows.  We have recently
introduced one of our local FOSS experts, Toya, a woman, to them in the
hopes that there will be chemistry there between Toya and this group.

There is a senior center in the Western Addition district that has expressed
an interest in evaluating FOSS boxes.  The manager of that group is also
involved in two other non-profits might be able to use FOSS.  I am going to
meet with this manager again on Thursday.  I have told her that our upstream
supplier does not support religious organizations per se, and that he would
need to approve any placements that sounded as if they were maybe
religious.  (The upstream supplier to whom I am referring is James Burgett,
of course).

My motivation for doing this outreach at this time is that, as you all know,
Andrew Fife announced at the SVLUG meeting last week that there will be a
large number of boxes that will be installed with Ubuntu GNU Linux on March
1.  Andrew and James are coordinating that activity, and so I will defer to
Andrew as to the details of that event.  Since we will have a lot of boxes
coming down the pipe, I wanted to offer our upstream supplier (James) with
several selections of placements for those computers in addition to the
school.

Also, I have been meeting with Kari Gray, who works with a contractor for
the City & County of San Francisco (CCSF) to do two additional community
outreach programs.  One will be in late April, and the other will be on
March 1, 2008.  It is important that we not get those two events confused.
Andrew and James are coordinating a massive installfest on March 1, 2008.
There will be several locations that Andrew will announce.  One of those
locations will be the KIPP public middle school at Geary and Scott.  We hope
to install between 60 and 100 boxes there on March 1.  The April event will
be a general tech day to get people in the Mission District interested in
technology, both proprietary and FOSS technology.  I will post more info to
this list when I find out about it, presumably by February 28 or so.

But also on March 1 will be a community outreach at St. Anthony's Foundation
(SAF).  We did receive some good publicity for the first event at SAF, and
so we want to continue to push that contact.  Here is a video from CNet
which showcases Ubuntu and several of our community members, including
Kristian Hermann, introducing people to FOSS.  The really funny thing about
this piece is that it subtley shows that the Microsoft Windows-centric
people who were at that event were not able to provide a licensed copy of
Microsoft Windows for the main protagonist of the video (obviously) and so
they had to send him over to the GNU Linux people for help.  The video is
done in a very even-handed manner, and does not come off as being a fanboy
piece for Linux or Ubuntu.

http://www.news.com/Tenderloin-Tech-Day/1606-2_3-6223419.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news

We will probably only need about 5 people to be at SAF on the day of the
event, but we will need many more than that for the massive
ACCRC.orginstallfest.  So please start planning now if you are
interested in helping
out on March 1.

Thanks to everyone who is supporting these activities.  We are really
getting a lot done here in the Bay Area.  I hope that it is fun for
everyone.
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