On Wednesday 16 March 2005 22:33, Alexander Schmehl wrote: > * Andreas Tille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [050316 19:21]: > > only in German, but we should take this serious. Perhaps some > > people have a different kind of humor than we at the Debian > > booth: > > http://linuxlog.de/item/cebit2005ernuechterndeeindrueckegrosseerw > >artungen I certainly know that other opinions exist but this > > should not happen anyway. > > Guys, could we please postpone that discussion a few days or at > least till tomorrow evening? > > Those, who were there, are unable to join the discussion and > comment on that. Thomas Templin, is sick, OK, I'm back on deck, mostly. :) > Joerg is still on his way home and I need to stay in Hannover till > tomorrow to arrange the pickup of our hardware. > > We are all exhausted, we all need some rest, and I can barely keep > my eyes open.
AFAIK for me the posting on linuxlog is an example for a lot of frustration. I see it as an example for someone who is very interested in Free Software and Debian and who get's very dissapointed. It's a matter of high expectations which comes together with some sad misunderstanding. This particular day when Mrs Margolis got outed as a Debian user for years in the daily CeBIT Fair Gazette is in very good reminiscence to all of us who where at the Debian booth. And I to my point of view can't remember a situation as it is mentioned in this linuxlog article. And I will bet for that Alexander and Joerg also hardly can't remember such a situation at that day as told in the article. Telling that all three of us disobeyed this guy is far away from being an objective recital of what really happened. It might be that one of us showed him in an undiplomatic way that Ubuntu is not very well seen but never all of us. AFAIK the team representing Debian at this years CeBIT was working hand in hand very effective. All of us who have ever been on a fair like CeBIT know that over the week there are some up and downs in motivation. But this particular crew was very good in intercepting the other in being to rude / gnarling. So if one of us was a bit gnarling one of the other guys stood aside to bring us back on the floor again. IMHO what is sad for me is the circumstance that a very good motivated friend of Debian was disappointed so much without one of us recognising this in that moment. The question for me is how could we avoid this in the future? I would suggest to invite Anaxagoras, the original poster of disappointment, http://linuxlog.de/user/Anaxagoras, to join us at one of our next events promoting Debian. May be he will see it with other eyes when he will get the chance to be one of the crew himself. And IMHO people who are as motivated as Anaxagoras showed in his article should be interesting as new volunteers promoting Debian at fairs and shows. At least as some kind of regulative for the 'Old men' who are promoting Debian at such events. ;-) (-; But for this Debian, better a lot of Debian people, have to leave it's position of social Darwinism which says that only people who pay all the bills by their own are allowed to participate in a booth. Skolelinux.de does this in an other way. Every cent of donation we make at an event we use to pay the bills of our fellows. Which gives us the chance to mobilise 20 people for an local event like LinuxTag Chemnitz. And Im not talking of Skolelinux Europe nor Debian-Edu nor Debian, this is done only by a handful of people from Skolelinux.de. We would never be able to occupy only part of this manpower if all of us had to pay the bill by their own. And we wouldn't had as much fun. ;-) Over the last month I've been talking to a lot of people how we could establish a better and more efficient 'user mobilisation'. I think it is a topic which has to be focused more than we did in the past. User mobilisation is a field which don't focus as much on the common skills which are needed e.g. for being a good Debian developer. It's more a matter of recruiting people with other skills but who will be very helpful for promoting free software. Developers not very often tend to be the best or good spokesmen / ambassadors of free software. ;-) I think there is a need for this more and more. We can see that the growth of free software is not as big than the growth of free software protagonists. E.g. if you have a look on the growth of 'linux user groups' they don't grow as much than we should expect it comparing to the growth of free software. This may become a problem for the future because more and more new users of free software don't get involved in the free software community. We can see more and more people which don't practise the spirit of free software. The meaning of giving and taking to be a part of the community get's lost more and more, you may see this in the change of behaviour and etiquette on a lot of mailing lists. There are some fields where we can see how such a user mobilisation can be done. E.g. in Germany some Universities established so called Erstsemester Tutorien, which may be translated as freshmen supervision. Alexander knows what I'm talking about, he is one of the people who organise such supervision at University of Frankfurt (Main). The object of such supervisions is _not_ to give information where to find the library or how to find the administration department. The object of freshmen supervision is to animate freshmen to start social interacting / community building. I've been involved in such programs over quite a decade as a spokesman of a bureau student affairs (AStA Sprecher) and in the Bundesarbeitskreis Erstsemesterarbeit (federal working pol of freshman work, is a poor translation). Evaluating such programs we saw that animating social interaction / community building was _very_ essential for studying efforts of freshmen. But supervision needs a lot of manpower. Debian will not be able to do this alone. So who will be interesting brothers in arms for this? First of all user mobilisation is not only interesting for Debian. And it is a field where the project name itself doesn't matter at all 'cause it will be helpful for all who are involved in free software. So all projects should be interested in such a, let me call it meta-project 'user mobilisation'. There are some people at local Linux User Groups (in Germany), Gnome-de, Skolelinux, Net/Free/Open BSD, OpenOffice.org, and even KDE who are interested in such a project. None of them denied the need for such a project. Under the aspect of community building we have the biggest Free Software event in Europe, LinuxTag Karlsruhe, which will be a very good place to become some kind of 'Free Software Woodstock'. This Event has just the community spirit and vibration we want new users to 'inhale' and to become a part of. Such an event has to be introduced on a very large scale / on a wide spreaded local scale but how could this be done? In the last years LinuxUser Group (LUG) Chemnitz and LUG Wilhelmshaven had their Events at the same weekend, 1st week of march. Last year we where able to establish a live video stream between Chemnitz and Wilhelmshaven. By this I got the idea for a national wide 'BundesLinuxTag'. - If a (a lot of / every) local LUG will have the chance to get a live stream of talks done by well known Free Software protagonists this will be very helpful valorizing their local event. - Local LUG will do their own program as far as their resources long, e.g. LUG people may give introducing talks and workshops. - It will be helpful for the well known protagonists not to have to travel long distances. If there is a LUG near to their home. - It will be very helpful for promoting such a event in a larger scale. Much press and media work can be done in one place. Local LUG's can use material and have to add their own program. (Kurt Pfeiffle has the idea for an on demand daily news gazette. This may be an idea for such a nationwide event too) - For local LUG's this may give the chance to get more people enthusiastic about active promotion of free software in their region / their LUG. - Debian would be an interesting partner for such a weekend, as assistants for local LUG's. On the other Hand Debian may use such an event for mobilising manpower for it's own needs. So there are three main targets of such a weekend: - spreading free software information nation wide on a regional base - starting a campaign for community building - being an introducement for _the_ European Free Software Event (where we will have the chance fishing for active supporters) May be it is an idea to discuss this in a birds of the same feather meeting at LinuxTag this year. At least we should offer this discussion for those who are interested. Bye, Thomas
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