Ubuntu Pennsylvania Local Community Team

Saturday July 14th, we will be on Gene Mitchell’s radio show, Computer Corner. Computer Corner airs every week at 8am on 1420 am WCOJ. If you miss the show (I understand wanting to sleep, I’m not looking forward to getting up so early), you can download a podcast of the show. I can’t find the link. I’ll update this with it later. It’s not really important until the show has aired. Kevin or Lyz and myself will be chatting with Gene about Ubuntu and free software. It should be a good time, so if you’re up early enough, tune into 1420 am WCOJ, the station is based in West Chester but reaches at least as far as Lancaster, call in and show your support for Ubuntu!

Today at 10:00 am est, the Ubuntu Community Council approved our application for official loco team status!! We at the Ubuntu LoCo team just want to say thanks to everyone who made this possible. Etank, Vorian, NTR, PACS, MALT, Girls inc., and everyone who attended our events. Thank you all. This is very exciting but is only the beginning, now that we’re approved we’ve got to keep our momentum and spread Ubuntu to the community. Way to go guys! This is only the beginning…

Tomorrow, June 26th, at 9AM EDT our team is going to the Community Council meeting in #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net to submit our application for official Approval as an Ubuntu team. This will entitle us to many benefits, as well as being an official recognition of our efforts.

The full Community Council Agenda can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncilAgenda.

Our approval application is located here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/ApprovalApplication

We’d also like to mention that Joe Terranova (wiki) is going up for Ubuntu Membership. He’s contributed extensively to this LoCo team in spite of living in New Jersey.

The Girls Inc Event put on by the Philadelphia Team was a success. We’re looking forward now to a possible follow-up event where we can answer any questions and offer help.

Event details:

Groups involved:

• Girls Inc of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey
• MALT CVG (Mt Airy Learning Tree Computer Volunteer Group) (blog)
• Pennsylvania Ubuntu Community/Local Team
• Philadelphia LinuxChix Chapter

Project: 10 computers were donated to Girls Inc by the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. MALT and the PA Ubuntu team became involved. The PhillyChix were contacted indirectly through the Ubuntu-Women Project. It was worked out between the groups that the appropriate way to move forward with installing software on these machines was to create a dual boot system using Windows 2000 (MALT is a licensed Microsoft reseller) and Ubuntu with a shared fat32 data partition.

Execution: Kevin Valentine of the Ubuntu PA group worked closely with MALT and Girls Inc to develop a plan and move forward on it. Kevin spent several days with these groups setting up one system and then copying the disk image over to several of the other machines. On June 9th all the groups met at the Girls Inc location in Philadelphia. The Ubuntu PA team and PhillyChix set up the room, brought in monitors and helped bring up the machines when MALT arrived. Kevin and Lyz worked on imaging the remaining 4 machines and Lyz gave a brief talk to the entire group about Linux, Ubuntu and her own career in technology. MALT showed the girls around Windows, and before a lunch provided to volunteers by Girls Inc a few of the girls where shown around Ubuntu.

Conclusion: There were time and other restraints placed on the volunteers. In the future a better planning schedule would be useful, as well as more time to show more of the girls their Ubuntu systems. We intend to hold a follow-up session for any of the girls who would like to return and have more training on their computers.

A huge thanks to everyone who came out to the event, we couldn’t have done it without so many helpful people around to offer help

Photos:

• More photos by Joe Terranova and Christina Eater
• Photos by Kevin Valentine

Welcome to the Ubuntu Community to all of the people who allowed us to install Ubuntu on their computers.

Please take the time to review all the resources available here :
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/Resources

We need your support. If you feel this have been beneficial to you : 1) Join the LoCo
2) Get Involved
3) Tell friends and family about Ubuntu and the community.

A big thanks to everyone at NTR for all their help and for allowing us to use their establishment for this event.

A big thanks to all the volunteers who came out and freely gave their time to make this event a success.

Thank you to all of the LoCo members who could not attend, but whose work leading up to the event made it possible to achieve the results we achieved.

Read the rest of this entry »

–>OFFICIAL INSTALL FEST PAGE!!<–

You may have heard about Ubuntu. You wanted to try it but didn’t know where to begin. Are you sick of computer viruses, malware, spyware, and constant hardware upgrades? Come to our install-fest and let our volunteers help you become a part of this amazing computing phenomenon by installing Ubuntu Linux on your PC. Ubuntu is a community developed Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops, or servers. When you install Ubuntu, you have access to thousands of open source software packages which cost you nothing! Whether you want to surf the web, listen to music, watch a movie, or create a presentation, you can do it with Ubuntu! Whether it is for home or office, Ubuntu can do it all. Not sure you’re ready to risk your important data by dual booting your pc? Take advantage of our partnership with NTR! We’re offering pcs and macs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled for as low as $50! This free service is provide by Philadelphia’s local community of Ubuntu users and NTR’s gracious use of their warehouse. There is a limited amount of space so make sure to register at meetlinux.com for one of our sessions! Where: Nonprofit Technology Resources, 1524 Brandywine Street, Philadelphia PA 19130 When: June 2, 2007, three 2 hr sessions: 10a-12p; 12:30p-2:30p; 3p-5p More Info can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/Philly/InstallFest/ Register here!

Howdy,

Some of you have been inquiring into when we’ll have the next InstallFest and New User Meeting… I’m pleased to announce that this will be on Saturday, May 19th, from 10am to 6pm at ITT Tech.

This has been made possible by Andria, a generous workaholic who’s willing to come in on a Saturday and make all this happen… we’ll need to thank her come Saturday.

So, bring your laptops, your PC’s, your Linux questions, and we’ll have a blast.

The format will largely be informal. You can just show up at any time, and we’ll help you with whatever you need. We can help install Linux, help you configure an existing Linux installation, or you can simply pick the brains of the folks there.

Our hope is to also have a few mini-sessions throughout the day to cover some specific topics. Those are all TBA at the moment, but if you have any topic requests now is the time to let us know!

We of course would also love to have you there if you’re knowledgeable in the Linux realm. So even if you don’t personally want any help, please come along, someone might be able to use your help!

Details:

What: InstallFest / New User Meeting
When: Sat May 19th, 10am – 6pm
Where: ITT Tech, room Theory #3
What to bring: Laptop or PC (you can bring a PC, but you’ll need to
have all your cables with you!)

Wired and wireless Internet will be available.

See you there!
-Eric

FYI there will be a meeting for the Philly install fest tomorrow at 11am at NTR (15th and Brandywine in Philly). It’s 1 block north of Spring Garden and right off of broad street so very easy to get to for drivers/public transportation people. We will be meeting there around 11 and expect to go until around 3. Everyone is pretty much welcome. We’ll be discussing and pounding out most of the logistics of the event. If you need directions check the calendar (http://www.meetlinux.com/calendar/) for a map. Hope to see you all there!

Thanks ACE Technology Group! For supplying us with this domain name and hosting solution! ACE Technology Group are Pennsylvania’s only Official Ubuntu Support Affiliate. Located outside of Philadelphia, ACE Technology Group are a complete IT department for your small business. Whether you have 5 or 500 computers in your network, ACE Technology group can help you manage them. www.acetechgroup.com.

This website brings together the resources of the Ubuntu PA LoCo team. Please check out our Forums, Wiki and the rest of this site to learn about our events, purpose and goals.