Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Proposal] Mailing lists

[GNOME Foundation]

Hello Telsa,

On Thu, 2003-10-23 at 05:42, Telsa Gwynne wrote:

> The situation is that there are quite a few Gnome people in the 
> UK, but we are lamentably bad at getting ourselves to shows. We
> never have time, transport, people, machines, goodies, and a plan 
> all at the same time. London is a long way for people and expensive 
> to reach.

> It's a problem common to many groups, but other groups seem to 
> overcome it. 

It is a common problem.  There is now a GNOME Deutschland group in
formation to deal with the same issues.  In the States, we can easily
staff booths on the east coast or in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley, but
outposts like Chicago or Las Vegas don't have a concentration of gnome
hackers.  So, we have started to work with some LUGs to provide gnome
love at regional events.  It's much easier to get users involved after
someone from GNOME gives an exciting presentation to a LUG.

> What we need is to find out how to get machines to shows 
> cheaply, whether local companies will do it (especially if we can 
> scrounge boxes and delivery of them), and so on.

It is possible to get hardware loaners from some of GNOME Foundation's
Advisory Board member companies - IBM, HP, Sun.  In some instances,
however, they need 90 day lead time to schedule use of the equipment.  

> If we could do that sort of thing, rather than three of us
> arriving with our laptops or smallest computers on the train,
> that would help so much.

If we can work the known UK events into the master calendar for 2004
Leslie and I assembled, then I'll run equipment requests up the flag
pole and see who salutes.  Obviously, the UK group wouldn't have to
settle on who would staff the booths so far in advance.  It would mean,
however, that machines could be shipped directly to the show/conference
ready to be set-up and configured by whomever volunteers.  GNOME
Foundation could also manage to make a banner or some posters for UK
use, if someone doesn't mind acting as depot manager to store and ship
the things.

> So the mailing list is no problem. As I said, I am setting one
> up now. Gnome's problem in the UK is just getting to the shows
> with people and equipment. Whether setting up a mailing list 
> will solve that, I don't know. We shall see.

Thanks for taking the initiative, Telsa.  I kept board-list on the cc:
for this reply just because marketing and outreach is a current topic.

tim