Re: Starting Chicago Gnome User Group

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

I don't think so.  Nobody has really ever started a user group.  But I
think I would start by contacting the local Linux users group(s).  Then
talking with local GNOME people and get started.  Then use word of mouth
and try to grow your membership.

Then I start formulating some goals:

* Working with schools to get GNOME as a primary platform
* Create a market for support for GNOME  - get professional consultants
to support GNOME support it on the side etc.
* Work with government and linux distributors to create a corporate
market for GNOME.  I hear Ubuntu is hungry for corporate deployments and
certainly we have SuSE and RedHat who have mature products.

Those are some sample objectives off the top of my head.  Later on, you
could try to create a conference in the tri-state area (Illinois,
Michigan, Indiana) to promote Linux desktops with our KDE brethren and
start taking some serious mindshare away from Microsoft.

How's that?

sri

On Sun, 2007-04-22 at 13:18 -0400, Ken VanDine wrote:
> Good question, do we have any helpful wiki pages out there to get
> organizers started?  If not we really should, might help encourage
> more folks to take the initiative that Kevin is.
> 
> --Ken
> 
> On 4/21/07, Kevin Harriss <special kevin gmail com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > My name is Kevin Harriss and I am new to this list was just wondering
> > if anybody was interested in joining/helping out a Gnome User Group
> > based in Chicago, Illinois in the United States.  I was looking at the
> > list of Gnome User Groups and noticed that there was a lack of US
> > based user groups so I decided that I would try to correct this
> > problem.  I know there is a strong tech base in Chicago with Google,
> > Red Hat and IBM.  I am actively involved in the Free/Open Source
> > Software community in Chicago, I work with the Chicago GNU/Linux User
> > Group, http://chiglug.org and I also help out with packaging for
> > Foresight Linux.  Foresight Linux is the base for the new Gnome Live
> > CD.  If you are interested in helping out, a couple of us are hanging
> > out in #gnome-chi on irc.gnome.org please stop by and say Hello.
> >
> > Also, if anybody has any information about starting a Gnome user group
> > or information learned during the process of running a user group
> > please pass it along.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -specialKevin
> > Kevin Harriss
> > --
> > marketing-list mailing list
> > marketing-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
> >
-- 
Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>