[Nolug] ideas

I enjoyed my first meeting last night, and I've been thinking about
Joey's call for ideas.

>From what I gathered, the main interest here is to increase interest in
*nix. Now, I am biased towards FreeBSD, but in my opinion, its about what freenix the user
wishes to use - so it really doesn't matter at this point what sytem one chooses.

Over the past couple of years I have been using Linux, *BSD, Solaris,
etc, I have come to a couple
of conclusions about the spread of interest and usage:

1) I think it is healthy to concede the M$ will hold the desktop of the
masses for quite some time
to come.
2) People use systems other than Windows because they desire more of an
experience out of their
computer usage than just the ability to write papers, send emails, and
download porn.
3) For many desktop users, Windows is *good enough* to get done what
they want to, and these are
not the people we should target.

I do not think less of my mom because what she has suits her needs, and
she is not interested in anything else. Quite the contrary, I would rather her stay in her
world because it is less pain on me to set her stuff up and maintain it. On the other hand, as a
fan of *nix (note, not an anti-m$ activist), I think that it is in the best interest of those
that depend on highend applications to use something that is little more than a toy os. This
includes workstations in the scientific and engineering arena, backend servers, and hobby
systems. Some may scoff at this, but this is where most of the energy needs to be put if one
wants to increase the presence of *nix.

From, that I think that some of things we could do are:

1) Partnership with the universities around New Orleans (UNO, Tulane,
Loyola, Xavier, Delgado,
etc) to promote the fact that NOLUG exists, and that this is a group
where they can further their
interests and experience.
2) Target IT managers of small to medium size companies around New
Orleans (La Technology
Council?), and give them demonstrations, workshops, and give them
factual and objectionable proof
that these technologies will save the money, time, headache, and
security.
3) Some how dispell the myth that *nix users are just a bunch of
antisocial kids chatting on IRC
and breaking into other systems.
4) See how we could work with the city's technology initiative.

Since this technology is going to be part of the fabric of tomorrow, I
think it is important to
establish a professional and respectible reputation amongst the
business community. It is not our
job, nor is it in our interest to spread *nix like a religion and try
to convert people. It is
our job to encourage its use among the interested and potentially interested, and effectively
demostrate to savvy individual users and business on a budget
that this is the way to go because it is cheaper and technology is superior.

I bring all of this up to spark dialogue because I am sure that among
the people on the list, we
can come up with successful ideas.

Thanks for listening,
Brett

=====
public BrettDEstrade(){
 this.email="estrabd(at)yahoo(dot)com";
 this.url1="http://www.brettsbsd.net/";
 this.eFax="(253)484-8755";
 this.iM ="YMsg(estrabd),ICQ(46248888),AIM(bz743)";
 this.misc ="A.M.D.G.";
}

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Received on 10/21/02