[clue-admin] Re: [NCLUG] CLUE InstallFest, 12 Feb 2005

[Crawford Rainwater]

Elizabeth:

InstallFest for CLUE are meant for anyone and everyone from novice and
newbie to savvy and guru to attend.  I have coordinated and attended the
past CLUE-North InstallFests at DeVry being the CLUE-North Coordinator
(I am unable to attend the upcoming one due to prior obligations out of
town though) and though we (savvy and guru) have an odd ratio of being
swamped at times with the newbie and novice questions, we typically
offer a hand to get people at least started with Linux on his/her
machine.  I will confess there are sometimes those extremely unusual
questions where something cannot be tested nor works, but in the end we
at least get people 85% to 90% up and running if not 100% in a few hours
(minus a Gentoo installation someone wanted to try which can take 2 days
with an average machine to be honest).

Students from any university are welcomed, especially since we are
hosted by DeVry University.  In fact we have had several students attend
both our meetings and InstallFests on a regular basis.

As for attending our meetings, anyone and everyone is welcomed to
attend.  CLUE-North meetings are on the fourth Mondays of the month and
CLUE(-DTC) are on the second Tuesdays of the month, however CLUE-North
is closer to Ft. Collins I will admit (one of the reasons we started
CLUE-North back in Aug 2002 was due to the distance factor for some not
being able to attend CLUE(-DTC) meetings).

As for getting students and people involved in Linux, I would actually
encourage and extend the invitation to come to the CLUE InstallFest
instead of not mentioning this event to your students.  I am wondering
about your past experiences since I have not meet you personally (at
least I cannot place your name to a face to be honest) so I cannot ask
what in particular made your InstallFest experiences seem negative not
to share this information with others.  Again, I will admit, not every
Linux savvy or guru type can answer all questions during an InstallFest,
but most of us know where to point someone that is willing to learn in
the right direction via the web typically to find out more about those
"odd problems" of an installation.

Hopefully you will decide to pass this information to your students and
maybe attend yourself.  I hope to see you there.

Sincerely,

Crawford Rainwater
CLUE-North Coordinator

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On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 20:28 -0700, elizabeth boese wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I've a question concerning installfests, as I've been to two install 
> fests in the past.
> 
>  I'm currently an instructor at CSU teaching intro to programming courses.
> We have our students working on Fedora in the labs, and some students get
> excited and want to know how to get linux installed on their home machines.
> For the past couple of semesters, I've advertised about the installfest 
> that comes around,
> though I dont know if many actually attend.
> 
> My concern is that they're not welcome at these installfests.
> I shouldn't be advertising about your installfests if my students aren't 
> wanted guests!
> Neither you nor I want a situation like that!
> 
> I realize that most of my students are either new to CS and/or linux and
> don't necessarily know how to work the command line or understand the 
> requirements
> of most of the linux installs (though I found mandrake really easy, 
> debian was a nightmere).
> The installfests I've attended tend to be more 
> "you're-on-your-own-unless-you-get-stuck"
> and "if-you-want-to-know-that-you-gotta-hire-me-to-teach-a-course-to-you".
> (Though I must say I did have one or two people who really helped me through
> both installfests.)
> However, I didn't get much help until I was absolutely exacerbated and 
> pulled teeth to get some help.
> So I believe this is my fault, that I held a disillusionment of the 
> purpose of the installfests.
> I honestly naively thought they were intended for those new to linux who 
> needed help
> getting their system installed, not just for gurus who want to play with 
> a couple of new flavors for fun.
> 
> So this leads me to my request.
> You guys in CLUE and NCLUG are the gurus in Linux and seem to like working
> on Linux systems.  Would it be possible to have an installfest where the 
> intentions
> are to help those who are flustered and frustrated or just don't know 
> what to do?
> However, I get the impression that you cannot find enough helper-people 
> for such an activity.
> What if one of my students attended one of your regular Tuesday 
> meetings, would you help them install linux?
> I am not going to recommend the installfests anymore, since I don't believe
> that it's intended for the novice.  But I would like to direct them 
> somewhere to get help.
> Would you know of anything?  I can inform them about the e-mail list, if 
> they'd like to try
> to post their questions there (assuming that's okay with you).
> 
> Thanks,
> -z
>