Event: "What is Ubunutu?" Presentation at PACS

[kejava]

For those that couldn't make it, the Joe Terranova's presentation went very well. There were two Ubuntu tables setup, one with Ubuntu propaganda/CDs/stickers/Ubuntu-Woman flyer and another with PCs that had various flavors of Ubuntu installed (nice job JimF!).

It was quite amazing to see how we all just jumped into our roles. I'm not sure how much everyone planned for this event but it looked exceptionally organized. I've been MIA for most of the week so the most I did for planning was to tell Alex and Jim that I should be there at noon. I felt a little bad that I didn't bring any PCs but there was Jim with his collection! That cheapo PPC was perfect for demonstrating Xubuntu. I registered two people on it.

Many of missed Joe's presentation (sorry Joe) while we prepared for the wave of people. Every now and then BenA would come back with praising comments about the presentation. From what we heard everyone loved it! Looks like we have a top notch spokesman for the Ubuntu LoCo teams.

Thanks to Alex, Andy, and Lyz (did I miss anyone?) the meetlinux site ran like a champion. The few registrations that I did went very smooth.

There's so much more I want to mention but I have to eat some dinner. I just wanted to say it continues to be a pleasure working with all of you. Things just worked so smoothly today.

More things to mention later: my trip to an NTR event after, Joe's suggestion of network installs for install-fest, automated cd burning/verification.

[lamalex]

everything went really well, so far we're up to 9 registered for the installfest in june, we've got 2 more weeks let's get a good final push and get as many as we can!!

[elizabeth]

I'm really really pleased with how well it turned out! I wasn't sure what to expect.

Jim wrote about it here: http://jedijf.blogspot.com/2007/05/pacs-meeting-success.html

And I just posted an entry with pictures: http://princessleia2.livejournal.com/333193.html

[n3gbz]

Congratulations on a successful event1 i enjoyed checking out the photos1

keep up the great work!

[kejava]

More things to mention later: my trip to an NTR event after, Joe's suggestion of network installs for install-fest, automated cd burning/verification.

When I went to NTR yesterday I got there so late I was only able to help one person. Turns out I could only help prove that his desktop was fodder for a shipment to Elemental (http://www.eleminc.com/). The whole time I helped him I talked up the upcoming install-fest at NTR. He said plans to attend and may bring some friends. The employees/volunteers seemed quite excited about the event too. Two of them came up to me saying they plan to register and spread the word. Of course, I doled out the flyers and said to spread the word. They were trying to use some recently donated laptops that appeared to be missing hard drives. The booted in Puppy and were pleasantly surprised that they could run a complete graphical OS without a hard drive. They were also shocked when I pulled out the CD while the OS was up and running. Everything continued to run from RAM. I left the Puppy CD for them to play with. The people at NTR have a true NEED for open source tools/utilities. Any of you that have been to the Workshops know exactly what I mean. I hope this upcoming install-fest solidifies our relationship with them.

JoeT's suggestion of network installs is a good one. I've only done it with Slackware on some really old laptops. At that time, it was a feature of the installation and all you needed to do was setup an NFS server. The method JoeT described was familiar: using a PXE-based netboot. This is common on thin clients booting from terminal servers running the LTSP package. I'll just say it before anyone else, yes, netbooting and network installs have been around for a very long time. However, only recently has it gotten easier to setup. Before I get into this too much, take a look at this link to Ubuntu PXE Install (http://wiki.koeln.ccc.de/index.php/Ubuntu_PXE_Install). I'm not suggesting we use this for the June 2nd install. We don't want to over complicate things just yet. There are issues having more than one DHCP server on the same network, not all PCs support PXE boots so we'd have to use etherboot floppies, blah blah. We should continue this on a separate thread of 'Future Install-Fest Enhancements' or something.

Alex told me to look around the Ubuntu forum for info iso burned CD verification. I listened and found the Verify ISO Howto (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VerifyIsoHowto). I tested it and found that it works as expected. I've added some ugly code to my already ugly Python auto-burner app. I'm going to recruit BenA to give it a makeover.

It's amazing what we can learn from each other after literally seconds of direct interaction. One more thing, JoeT lent me his swanky Ubuntu Banner for our Install-Fest. I'm thinking we should put it right above the garage door next to the downstairs classroom. Most people enter there for the Workshops.

[bfledderjohn]

Good job people! I love this... That's three strong events back to back! I'm really looking forward to the results of the Philly Installfest!

Thanks for everyone's hard work!

[jedijf]

email from a pacs member


To the PACS Board:

I just wanted to make sure that the PACS Board members were aware that at the May general PACS meeting, the main meeting room about Ubuntu Linux was more full than I recall it being the whole year, and that the cafeteria staff commented that they were running out of food because of the high demand. Activity continued until the clock approached 3 PM, when the school is usually deserted.



A special thanks to Joe Terranova and the Ubuntu area LoCo group for a great presentation and generating so much enthusiasm at our meeting. Russell Tobias, PACS member
cc: PACS Linux SIG e-mail list


We may have started something!

[lamalex]

That's awesome!! Way to go Joe. I hope more of them register, we're up to 10 registrants

[elizabeth]

JoeT posted a blog entry about it with pictures:

http://www.joeterranova.net/2007/05/22/pacs-presentation-pa-loco-team/

[Jfrost]

Bit late chiming in but it was an amazing presentation. Showing how versatile linux was from openwrt to servers and showing that it can actually work. Just a great presentation.