Katalog
August 21st, 2009, 01:16 AM
Tonight was my first effort at an Ubuntu community outreach during one of our town's "Third Thursday" events that they hold all summer. We had about 80 CDs that my wife and I had burned from ISO and labeled by hand, about 50 brochures and 70 or so home made business cards with my email contact info and the Ubuntu download and forums URL on them. We set up two netbooks. I had mine set with some soft background music going and a slide presentation about Ubuntu running on a continuous loop, and I set my wife's up so people could get some hands on experience if they were inclined to do so.
Had quite a few curious questioners, and managed to get people to walk away with around 20 Ubuntu CDs and way more literature than that. People seemed to be more interested in taking the brochures than the software itself for some reason (I mean it is free software, after all). But all in all I would call it a moderate success. Even if I only converted one or two people it will have been worth it.
The biggest thing that struck me was how difficult it was to get the average person to grasp the concept of an "operating system". They may have been using a computer for years, but still weren't familiar with the term. The other thing that surprised me was the age range of people who were most interested in talking about Linux. I'd guess that the majority of them were males ranging in age from somewhere between 45 to 65. Also got three or four females to engage in conversation and take some CDs and literature.
Now I'm just glad I've got a month's break before I do it again. If anyone has any suggestions on conducting this kind of thing that might help elicit more interest, I'm totally open to ideas.
Had quite a few curious questioners, and managed to get people to walk away with around 20 Ubuntu CDs and way more literature than that. People seemed to be more interested in taking the brochures than the software itself for some reason (I mean it is free software, after all). But all in all I would call it a moderate success. Even if I only converted one or two people it will have been worth it.
The biggest thing that struck me was how difficult it was to get the average person to grasp the concept of an "operating system". They may have been using a computer for years, but still weren't familiar with the term. The other thing that surprised me was the age range of people who were most interested in talking about Linux. I'd guess that the majority of them were males ranging in age from somewhere between 45 to 65. Also got three or four females to engage in conversation and take some CDs and literature.
Now I'm just glad I've got a month's break before I do it again. If anyone has any suggestions on conducting this kind of thing that might help elicit more interest, I'm totally open to ideas.