Ubuntu Pennsylvania Local Community Team

Our team will be running at table at the upcoming Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) 2009.

 The Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) is a small, low-cost, one-day conference about all things Open Source. It will be held on Saturday, October 17, 2009.

In order to make this happen, we need to raise $100 to sponsor the table there, team contact Bret Fledderjohn will be collecting donations and handling securing the table.Can you help sponsor our table at CPOSC 2009?

Thank you!

Ubuntu Pennsylvania team member Elizabeth Krumbach will also be presenting at this conference on “Contributing to Open Source Projects.”To see other speakers and topics see their speakers page. We have created a wiki page for this event:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/EventsTeam/CPOSC2009

You can also check out Bret’s blog post about the event!

On August 5th Alex Launi did a presentation on Bazaar (bzr) for the Philadelphia area Linux Users Group (PLUG).

As you may be aware, bzr is the version control system used by Ubuntu and many other projects. The talk follows in the series of version control system talks we’ve been having a PLUG, and was well-received by the audience.

Well done Alex! Slides here:Bazaar version control system

In other member news, Ubuntu Pennsylvania member Elizabeth Krumbach will be presenting on Women in F/OSS at PLUG Central in September. She also had a talk on Contributing to Open Source Projects accepted for the upcoming Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference.

Jim Fisher (The Awesome!) received confirmation that we’ll be the stars of this upcoming Software Freedom Day at the Philadelphia Area Computer Society on September 19th from 8:30AM to 3:15PM. PACS meetings are held in the  Community Center at the Super Giant Food Store in Willow Grove PA 315 York Road, Willow Grove, PA 19090.

So far we have a presenter lined up who will give a talk about MythTV. We’re also looking to duplicate what we’ve done in the past with tables doing demos and such, but we need more ideas!

What will dazzle these primarily Windows and Mac users? Jim will be bringing along some of his older laptops to show how Linux can bring old hardware back to life, and has suggested we put together some information and have our experts available to discuss how free software works (who writes it? who packages it? who fixes it?).

We have a wiki page where you can add your ideas too,  and sign up for attending and volunteering with us that day:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/EventsTeam/PhillySFD2009

Also check out our Forums and Mailing List thread about the event:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1219350

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-pa/2009-July/000859.html

This is the first of regular meetings to get the group more organized in the South Central Pennsylvania area. Have a cup of coffee with other members, talk, network, and let us plan some exciting events! This is open to everyone (made this a coffee location instead of a pub so that underage or alcohol opposed folk won’t be left out), so let’s have a good one.

Date: 08/08/09
Time: 1:00pm(EDT)
Where: Cornerstone Coffee House – Camp Hill, PA
Coordinator: Bret Fledderjohn
email: freelancer317 AT verizon DOT net

Wiki page w/ agenda is here:  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/EventsTeam/080809SCPA

We’re in the formation stages of a collaboration with FreeGeekPenn in Ephrata. On Saturday morning Kevin Valentine, Stephen Nichols and Elizabeth Krumbach spent some time with their staff.

FREE GEEK PENN is a non-profit organization that recycles used technology and provides computers, education and access to the internet to those in need in exchange for community service.

Our intention for meeting up with them was to see how our team could lend a hand in their operations.

We came bearing Ubuntu gifts and we were welcomed very warmly by the staff. We immediately were able to speak with one of the organization founders, Stephen Bailey, who was helpful and gracious, eventually giving us a full tour of the facility. He was joined by their resident “Linux Guy” Adam Markley.

Obviously our team was there to lend support on the Linux side of things, our discussion revolved around a few major topics, and avenues that our team could help with:

• Intro to Ubuntu Classes
• PCs being sent to Africa programs (possibly deploy Ubuntu rather than shipping them OS-less)
• Desktop deployment (perhaps a bit premature, they outlined issues encountered the last time they tried this)

We’ve put together a wiki page detailing our possible collaboration options and notes about their past Linux deployment experience:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/CommunityOutreachTeam/FreeGeekPenn

We think starting out with Ubuntu Classes, working with their systems-to-Africa program, and in general being available as free “Linux Experts” will do wonders for the acceptance of Ubuntu over there.

Interested? Please follow up to the thread on our mailing list or thread in our forum.

As a final note, they are in need of an experienced grant writer to work with them on funding, if you know of anyone please let them know (or let Elizabeth know and she’ll put you in touch directly).

Over the past couple months our LoCo members have been active within the greater Geek community, first as mentioned in the last post by representing our team at the Southeast Linuxfest where Andrew Keyes and Elizabeth Krumbach worked with the Freenode folks to develop slides and met up with other awesome LoCo members in the US. We also participated in to BoF sessions held by Amber Graner of the North Carolina team, details of which have been blogged and photos posted about:

• Amber Graner: My First Linux Fest: SELF (Southeast Linux Fest)
• Elizabeth Krumbach: Southeast LinuxFest!
• Andrew Keyes: Southeast Linuxfest 2009

Then on July 10-12 Andrew and Elizabeth attended the weekend-long Geeknic++ at Jenny Jump campground over in New Jersey. Photos of this event have been posted:

• Photos by Andrew Keyes
• Photos by Elizabeth Krumbach

Andrew Keyes and Elizabeth Krumbach from the Pennsylvania LoCo team will be joining PLUG member Jonathan Simpson and his fiancee Crissi down to the Southeast Linuxfest (SELF) this Saturday, June 13th.

Both the Pittsburgh Jaunty Release Party (held on April 23rd) and the Philadelphia Jaunty Release Party (held of May 2nd) were successes! Both had around 20 attendees in total.

Photos are online now!

Pittsburgh: 

More: http://gallery.ubuntupennsylvania.org/main.php?g2_itemId=724

Philadelphia: 

More: http://gallery.ubuntupennsylvania.org/main.php?g2_itemId=733

The Philadelphia Geeknic yesterday was a fantastic success. We topped out around 30 attendees from across all kinds of geek disciplines. Scifi? Yep! Science? Yep! Computers? Well, that goes without saying!

http://gallery.ubuntupennsylvania.org/main.php?g2_itemId=556

http://gallery.ubuntupennsylvania.org/main.php?g2_itemId=622

At the Americas Board meeting this past Tuesday evening Alex Launi became the latest Ubuntu Pennsylvania member to become an Ubuntu Member!

From the announcement:

Alex has been an active member of the US Pennsylvania LoCo team since 2007 and is a developer for GNOME Do. Within the core Ubuntu community his contributions have been primarily to the LoCo as one of the mailing list admins and a launchpad admin, as well as contributing to development of the website and attending and participating in many events. He is also active on the forums giving support and does bug reporting and was recently involved with some testing with the Intel video drivers in Jaunty.

Congratulations Alex!