Re: CeBIT booth

On Wednesday 16 March 2005 22:33, Alexander Schmehl wrote:
> * Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de> [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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