[advocacy-discuss] [Fwd: Re: [ug-discuss] OpenSolaris User Group Growth]

[S h i v .]

On 6/25/07, Jim Grisanzio <Jim.Grisanzio at sun.com> wrote:
> Moving this thread from the old ug-discuss to advocacy-discuss:
> http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=31624&tstart=0
>
> Last month we were having a conversation about growing the number of
> OpenSolaris User Groups and the fact that Sun would be contributing more
> resources to the effort this fiscal year. The link above is the thread.
>
> There were many suggestions (and I'll be summarizing them in a proposal
> this week), but a couple involved video and audio and streaming ...
>

Was attempted in bosug (Bangalore osug). Difficult to implement. Often
the user groups are not geared (*time*, expertise, bandwidth,
equipment) to produce high quality recordings for every session. The
interest that a monthly user-group meeting generates is limited to
small set of geographically closely situated people (unless someone
like Ian participates with a hot topic like Indiana! ).

> So, my question: if Sun could produce some technical videos as part of
> the overall package that we could offer to user groups for
> meetings/discussions/education, etc, what would be a good topic list to
> start from? In other words, we could record some engineers in Menlo Park
> and other Sun campuses doing talks on x topics. What are the most
> pressing issues to explore?
>

If the (some of the) recordings from SUN Tech Days can be put together
and made available, that in itself should be good content.
Lot of resource is spent to pull the event through - identifying the
topics, excellent speakers are there, wide range of topics are
covered, the event is recorded.
Identify the ones that are *permissible* to make available to the
public and do so. I am aware that it is a SUN's event talking about
the technologies that are FOSS as well as non-FOSS, and that
OpenSolaris day occupies 1day of the event. But I also know from the
agenda and from the one I attended in India that >80% of it was on
foss technologies.

> Also, regarding engineers and presentations: I think it would be a great
> contribution if Sun could send some engineers to participate at some
> user groups and do presentations. This will be a very expensive
> suggestion,

Am *very* skeptical about this. What are the benefits that are
expected to accrue?
I might be biased here since I am based in Bangalore where it is easy
to get access to people in the know from both within and outside Sun.

> But, we will be making a serious effort this year to collaborate with
> the Sun Tech Days team to get community speakers for the OpenSolaris Day
> Tour, to have user group meetings at the tour venues, and to start new
> user groups along the tour where none exist today.

+1.
This was indeed done earlier. Some observations based on that -
Organizing a BoF should be one of the topics to keep in mind for the
event organizers (to ensure a slot, resource, participants being made
known).
Communicating this clearly to the participants and making it part of
the program announcement (atleast at the venue if not in the earlier
communication) helps.
By the last day, the attendance thins down. Scheduling it a day before
is better.
Coordinating with the enthusiastic new volunteers for the UG to help
overcome birth pangs is important. Else many of the good tasks done in
the BoF session will not yield any results.

> We could find convenient times (during conferences, visits to customers,
> whatever) that would make these trips worthwhile.
>

+1

> In other words, the proposal I'm writing will be tired. All groups will
> get something (the UG Starter Kit, project spaces, lists, other
> resources, etc) because it's important for us all to focus on new and
> small groups as it is to focus on the bigger groups.

If there is a need for a tradeoff, I vote for allocating resources to
new and promising UGs.

> Thoughts on these issues?

Couple of additional points - I do not mean that these should be done by Sun.

[1] Work with the universities and produce structured technical
material that provides learning supplements for the *existing*
university programs based on opensolaris & related technologies. This
could often mean assembling the available documentation & softwares in
manner coherent with the university programs. Sometimes it might need
fresh inputs.

[2] Some good art-work that can be used on web-pages, presentations,
banners, logos, etc. *Good* art work that can be used by the local
user groups is lacking.
Ubuntu has a art-work community : http://art.ubuntu.com/main.php
(I am not someone who can contribute here :) )

regards
Shiv