[CLUE-Tech] Ideas?

[Matt Gushee]

On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 01:15:57PM -0600, Glen Newell wrote:
> 
> First, the obvious first thoughts are 'hey, we can put Linux on even *older
> and crappier hardware* and get the currently 'useless' boxes into service as
> 'net and homework and learning machines'...this is great, but the question
> of support becomes foremost in people's minds: as an open source evangelist,
> my usual responses involve the higher stability of a Linux box, and any
> support is community based, look for forums and online docs. This is great
> for a literate adult, but schoolkids from under-educated and under-financed
> homes don't have the cultural access to this level of information-gathering,
> usually.

Just to play devil's advocate, do you know that for a fact, or are you
assuming that to be the case? (I would probably make the same
assumption, so I don't have any answers, I just know enough to question
my assumptions about people from different backgrounds)

> I was thinking about this today and an interesting ( though I'm sure not
> unique) idea occurred to me: What about a collective of people qualified and
> willing to give some of their time to do the support of projects like this-
> say a kid (or any new user) gets a machine as part of a program like this,
> and needs some advice. They look at a little card or sticker they got with
> the machine and they send an email, got to a website, or call a phone
> number. Someone gives them the 10 minutes (average, probably) help required
> to get them back on the right track: a kid has learned, Linux wins a new
> supporter, and some Linux geek's karma has just been improved.
> 
> I'm interested to hear what everyone thinks about this...

Sounds cool to me. Actually, a group of us were trying to start a group
a while back that might have done the same thing (look for "LEAP" in the
CLUE-Talk archives). Partly because we were all kind of burned out,
partly because we were a bit confused about the purpose of the group, it
didn't really go anywhere.

If you want to get this going, I'd be happy to help out.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee at havenrock.com           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)