04:04:20 #startmeeting 04:04:21 Meeting started Thu Jan 7 04:04:20 2010 UTC. The chair is rbergeron. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 04:04:21 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 04:04:33 allll right i remembered and everything without looking at my crib notes 04:04:41 <----has had a trying day 04:04:47 so mchua: brainstorming. 04:04:51 rbergeron, thou art a ninja. 04:04:56 yes, brainstorming! 04:05:02 You said something about consulting? 04:05:17 we've discussed before the possibilities of perhaps providing consulting services to some of the fedora open-source projects out there. 04:05:26 be it things like: help us do a survey 04:05:57 or maybe other things like... we're looking for publications, looking to do interviews, help us make a marketing plan or social media plan, etc. 04:06:09 of course, this is wide open and dependent on available time, of course 04:06:26 but I was thinking it might be an interesting thing to sprint on for an hour or two at the FAD, maybe during strategy day: 04:06:40 what are the "services" we could provide to help projects out? 04:06:58 discuss that and then come up with a plan of action on how to broadcast our "availability" as helpers 04:07:05 Ooo. 04:07:10 and... 04:07:20 if we had someone willing to be a guinea pig, of sorts 04:07:28 who would be willing to say 04:07:37 when we went through those steps that you came up with during the FAD 04:07:45 i found it helpful, not helpful, i'd like more of this or that 04:07:48 PhrkOnLsh: KDE, fedora-tour? 04:08:01 and make a SOP, if you will 04:08:10 mchua: +1 on both 04:08:27 on "what are the steps we could take each time when doing a marketing plan or ... whatever for a project" 04:08:31 mchua: I'd like to look at marketing for -all- spins too, not just KDE. 04:08:39 hiemanshu|afk: step one, tell me about your project. 04:08:42 oh, sorry 04:08:51 * rbergeron is still on that #action fix my stupid irc client 04:08:57 :) 04:09:27 step 2, tell me what youer' doing now, step 3, what are the improvements you'd like to make, step 4, here's what we have to offer, step 5, disco. 04:09:32 or whatever. 04:09:41 <--- whatevering a lot tonight 04:09:52 * mchua nods - to make sure we get all spins eventually, we have to start with one as a test case. 04:10:01 actually, Desktop Spin (GNOME) is that test case for a lot of things 04:10:18 and this would be the next test case, the one that makes it way more generalizable (I think) 04:10:20 brainstorm #2, less head-filling: make a database of engineers / projects who are willing to do interviews / stories 04:10:31 and what types of... ahem... media they are comfortable with, when they are available, etc. 04:10:42 Ooh, so there's something I've been thinking of... 04:10:46 #link http://www.geekspeakr.com/ 04:10:51 * PhrkOnLsh is weird. 04:10:53 * PhrkOnLsh is listening to The Emotion - The Best of My Love [Amarok2] 04:10:57 such as, bob only wants to do irc or email interviews, and ww 25 is bad, but everyting else is good. 04:11:01 Not right now, because we have more than enough infrastructure projects for the time being 04:11:23 but geekspeakr is a speaker database - drupal-based - that's put up for... in this case, women in open source. 04:11:34 * rbergeron nods 04:11:41 It's a one-off, very difficult to maintain because of it (I've spoken to the maintainers) 04:11:47 * rbergeron was thinking something more like a wiki page to tide us over at the bare minimum 04:11:54 Right, a wiki page would totally work. 04:11:58 or.... better yet 04:12:03 when we do survey #1 04:12:10 although, it takes the anonymity out 04:12:14 ok, scratch that 04:12:20 Deployable geekspeakr-clone is definitely one of my "and I would like a pony!" items 04:12:22 i'm sure we could come up with a way. 04:12:33 if we had a monthly marketing newsletter or something it would be a great thing to add in 04:12:42 * rbergeron notes that if we just had a lot more time there is so much to do :) 04:13:02 * mchua wishes we could tap into recruiting more Marketeers to help out 04:13:08 * rbergeron notes that she will not be signing up on technical women to speak 04:13:15 :) 04:13:24 yikes is all i have to say about that! 04:13:30 * mchua hasn't been really good at this - I think it is because I'm not a marketer. 04:14:04 It's easy for me to tap engineering students, because I used to be one. But business schools are unfamiliar turf for me. 04:14:11 tapping into more marketeers? 04:14:16 well 04:14:23 i think there is a lot of... mental gap to bridge there. 04:14:47 the best students in business schools are the ones doing IT tracks, because they're exposed to all the broader business school stuff and have to take marketing courses 04:15:05 hmm 04:15:07 but they're not totally in the "i'm going to graduate and go work at kpmg" or whatever. 04:15:12 mindset 04:15:24 they're minimally familiar with open source 04:15:36 and for people in the , say, finance or accounting majors 04:15:45 they -still- say things like 04:15:58 "you're giving away stuff? how are you going to make money?" 04:16:27 * mchua nods 04:16:29 obviously it would be awesome if there was a business school class on "the open source software business model" 04:17:00 but i think very specific narrow focus classes like that don't exist 04:17:02 for anything 04:17:03 really 04:17:18 Oh, I someday want to have a Marketing-themed POSSE (professor bootcamp, http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE) to get b-school profs to figure out exactly that. 04:17:25 But we aren't there yet. 04:17:30 Maybe in summer 2011, we will be. 04:17:48 realistically the best way to tap students into volunteering is for them to be using fedora first :) 04:17:51 i think 04:18:09 it's easier to absorb the open-source concept if you are fully immersed 04:18:16 Also, there are pockets of individuals like Von Hippel who teach MBAs and research, say, the economics of FOSS. But... few and far between, yep. 04:18:19 rather than being an oursider 04:18:19 rbergeron: +1 04:18:38 errm. outsider. but our-sider works too, i suppose :) 04:19:08 i'm sure the documentation folks have the same problem 04:19:14 or a similar problem 04:19:29 who knows english and tools well enough, is technically capable to do things in linux, 04:19:44 and can understand all those things engineers say and then turn them into magic? 04:20:29 not many... :( 04:20:55 And how do the people with those skillsets learn them? 04:21:12 Design team, too - and QA, and... 04:21:24 How do we clone Sparks, how do we clone Mo, etc? 04:21:49 ...without requiring all Design folks to get an undergrad CS major before going into HCI? 04:21:55 well, for me, it was just a matter of doing what i wanted 04:22:35 i was pretty sure being a sysadmin was going to kill me so i somehow jumped into being a research analyst 04:22:46 and then i jumped into market modeling from there 04:23:06 analyst stuff appealed to me because i really liked english and writing, but, you know how it is 04:23:36 writing generally isn't very ... profitable 04:24:14 but writing about computers and servers worked for me since i had worked that end of the market, and i could write 04:24:49 go-go-gadget interdisciplinaryness! 04:24:51 but it's hard to put up a sign that says 04:25:04 burned out on restoring backups? come be in marketing! :) 04:25:12 * mchua chuckles 04:25:31 but, the nice thing about people switching things around 04:25:43 they bring all sorts of new perspectives to the table 04:26:07 Aye. 04:26:20 and really, a lot of people can do marketing 04:26:28 not a lot of people can code 04:26:43 so it seems like we should have a much bigger pool of "potentials" 04:26:52 * rbergeron invokes lines from "the matrix" 04:27:11 so, not to stray 04:27:12 I don't think that one is innately "less hard" than the other - or maybe to put it another way, I don't see one as "second class" to the other. 04:27:38 no, i don't think so either 04:27:54 however, i definitely couldn't code my way out of a cereal box without a lot of training 04:28:05 Coding and marketing are very different domains; both have rabbit holes that go down as deep as you want to chase 'em - the perception seems to be that the marketing rabbit hole is "easier" to jump into, though. 04:28:13 or at least a big stack of oreilly books 04:28:53 well, i think that jumping out of engineering and into marketing is probably more easy than vice versa 04:29:05 maybe one would not be a great marketeer, but certainly, a functional marketeer 04:29:10 I think that we may have a bigger pool, but marketing just sounds boring. people instantly think of suits and antifunstuff 04:29:12 with good perspectives 04:29:30 PhrkOnLsh: good point. 04:29:31 obviously those people have never been to vegas for technical boondoggles :) 04:29:56 PhrkOnLsh: Or conversely, marketing evokes images of glitz and hype and disconnection from reality. 04:30:21 bad experiences with marketing cloud a lot of people's perceptions 04:30:28 mchua: :P 04:30:41 when the marketing dudes come up with the plan that engineers are supposed to execute 04:30:42 Bad experiences with engineering too, for that matter, but... uh... *veers back on topic* 04:30:52 ...oh boy have I been on that side of the stick. 04:30:56 and the engineers sit around and say....... "what in the WORLD are they thinking of" 04:31:04 "who came up with this plan! why weren't we consulted!" 04:31:11 "this violates the laws of physics" 04:31:18 (I've actually seen that one multiple times) 04:31:20 "we could have -told- you that you can't build a time machine... helllooooo" 04:31:36 precisely 04:31:51 and this is where, in large companies, someone like a technical marketing engineer comes in 04:32:01 * mchua looks up the term "technical marketing engineer" 04:32:33 and in my experience, is usually the guy who was an engineer, but was SO GOOD with people and explaning things that they kind of... migrated 04:32:43 more or less a liason 04:32:46 * mchua looks at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_marketing and goes ...ahh, that's what that role is called 04:32:49 * rbergeron is not sure she spelled that right 04:32:54 liason, yep 04:33:02 it looks funny. anyway 04:33:11 when there's enough headcount to justify it.... 04:33:26 it's a great person to have, because they are a sort of gateway for translation 04:33:47 a slightly better version of the guy in office space who takes the plans from the one group, to the other group 04:33:50 :) 04:33:58 actually, a much better version 04:34:03 they're usually completely awesome 04:34:22 world-bridgers need awesometastic communication/diplomacy skillz. 04:34:40 * rbergeron steers the boat back over 04:34:46 how do we find these folks? or help them learn? and get them to join us? 04:34:46 ok so back to brainstorm :) 04:34:52 i have no clue. 04:35:26 it could be a matter of finding groups with problems, and they have those resources. 04:35:34 such as 04:35:39 My tactic so far has been "find the success stories, get their backstories, and figure out what parts of those learning experiences are reproducible." 04:35:46 * mchua nods, sits back to listen 04:35:49 Big Giant Company wants to help out and make Fedora better for their own XYZ purposes" 04:36:03 and they have these people resources 04:36:11 who we suck in with our awesomeness and they never want to leave! 04:36:27 finding the success stories is good. but it doesn't always bring the people. 04:36:33 i think having more people is cruuuuuuucial 04:36:40 and they always bring new ideas 04:36:44 and their own experiences to share 04:36:57 if it's something like 04:37:03 hey, you did this great thing, come TEACH us about it 04:37:06 ina classroom session 04:37:12 or ... hey, let's bring you to a FUDCON 04:37:26 and while you're there, hopefully you'll see how awesome fun it is and we are and the other great things we're doing 04:37:32 and how can we reciprocate and help -you- out? 04:38:18 * rbergeron is away for like 3 minutes, need to wash greasy popcorn hands 04:38:22 and find caffeine 04:38:32 blag posts to the planet /could/ go a long way, done right 04:38:48 Our content strategy for FI is going to be a *lot* of fun to play with, to figure thisi out. 04:38:55 s/thisi/this 04:38:58 "hey we aren't marketroids, this is some of the awesome stuff we do you can play along! joooooin usssss" 04:39:20 * mchua forsees us using wonderer's beautiful camera quite a lot in Raleigh 04:39:31 One phrase I use a lot - "you become what you celebrate." 04:39:39 Corollary: celebrate what you want to become. 04:39:43 * PhrkOnLsh can't find his camera :| 04:40:23 I think one of the things we may need to start with is simply "what's Marketing, anyway?" 04:40:51 I mean... when Max and Jack asked me to lead the team this summer, the first thing I had to do was go to Wikipedia, because I suddenly realized I did not know. 04:41:43 The more I learned about it, the cooler it got. 04:42:25 And marketing in open source is... it seems different from marketing within most companies. 04:42:45 * mchua hunts for current working draft of definition of open source marketing 04:43:16 aha, ok. Here's the original, from the Chartered Institute of Marketing: 04:43:18 Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. 04:43:25 and when patched, I ended up with: 04:43:29 Open source marketing is the community-driven process responsible for enabling users to identify, anticipate, and satisfy their own requirements sustainably. 04:43:43 hmm 04:43:46 * PhrkOnLsh parses 04:43:58 sounds much cool :) 04:44:13 * rbergeron would agree with that 04:44:13 Now, how do we turn that into action? 04:44:33 strategy for us, it seems, is somewhat two-pronged 04:44:47 number 1 is: how do we "market" fedora 04:45:03 number 2 is: how do we market marketing to our community 04:45:10 * rbergeron is not on track but was thinking that while washing her hands 04:45:17 * mchua notes that the diff between the two definitions may also be useful in figuring out why it's "hard" to get some marketeers to grok open source, and vice versa 04:45:40 well, i think the general opinion of a lot of people is that marketing is not what you just said. 04:45:47 rbergeron: number 3 is: how do we market contributing to the fedora community 04:45:56 i'd bet that probably 50% of people, if you asked what marketing does 04:45:59 (unless that's also #1) 04:46:00 would say something like... 04:46:18 oh, they make super bowl commercials, and those pretty pamphlets, and they have booth babes at conferences. 04:46:34 most people have no idea that there is a 'strategic' component to marketing 04:46:57 "wot! there iz a plan?? omg" 04:47:11 my opinion is that it is best to start small. 04:47:27 look what we did for this group, we can help you too. 04:47:50 helping projects out, with things like user surveys and geting feedback and using it to improve their project 04:47:54 Ayup. Build on concrete results. 04:47:54 in the end makes fedora better. 04:47:57 can we have booth babes? 04:48:04 and makes for great success stories, which makes other groups want to work with us. 04:48:12 * rbergeron will not be a booth babe 04:48:16 lol 04:48:25 * rbergeron thinks maybe we should budget for robert downey jr. to do booth babe work 04:48:26 PhrkOnLsh: I was thinking booth babies, actually. Small children: nobody can resist them. 04:48:32 * mchua j/k 04:48:34 small puppies? they work also. 04:48:44 mchua: that is actually an interesting idea... :) children of FP members 04:48:53 who are actually raised on FOSS and not M$ 04:49:06 my daughter is totally indifferent 04:49:14 it's like kids who are raised in multilingual environments. 04:49:22 * PhrkOnLsh , as a high school boy, still votes for babes. 04:49:23 she can mac, she can windows, she can linux 04:49:44 rbergeron: there are, for example, lcafiero and quaid's children, who will be presenting at SCaLE 04:49:53 ahhhh 04:49:55 together in the Women In Technology thinger 04:49:59 just a small example 04:50:04 ah 04:50:06 rbergeron: she knows linux exists, and it doesn't surprise her, and that in itself is great. 04:50:17 A great first step. 04:50:19 lauryn is 7, not sure she's ready for presenting yet :) 04:50:35 what amazes me is that they are still so mac-heavy in schools 04:50:39 in elementary 04:50:55 granted, they're mostly old school bondi blue original imacs 04:50:57 rbergeron: not in my elementary school. I went back there. all windows now 04:51:00 pesky budgets 04:51:10 the old iMacs are all gone :( 04:51:20 and i have no idea how universities are now 04:51:30 engineering had a solaris lab 04:51:30 or 2 04:51:37 and ... all the computer labs were 04:51:40 half dumb terminals 04:51:47 and half windows boxes 04:51:55 rbergeron: I hear ASU is pretty agnostic 04:52:00 a little of everything 04:52:04 at least in CS 04:52:09 and i'm guessing that short of engineering, labs are probably few and far between 04:52:17 since most people have laptops now 04:52:19 and computers in their rooms 04:52:27 And it probably came preinstalled with Windows. 04:52:30 whereas when i was in college i was rocking out with the black and white toshiba 04:52:34 in 1994 04:52:45 * PhrkOnLsh listens to van halen, brb 04:52:52 * mchua grins 04:52:54 * rbergeron might add that she actually got slackware running on it in 95 and is totally awesome 04:53:08 not to date myself or anything 04:53:12 i think i just did. 04:53:17 yes, mostly windows 04:53:27 everything is preinstalled with windows 04:53:32 dell has some stuff available with ubuntu 04:53:38 netbooks and some laptops 04:54:04 preinstalled 04:54:10 * PhrkOnLsh was thinking about talking to the red seven boys when he heads down to tempe, about getting fedora alongside ubuntu as install options 04:54:10 hp may as well 04:54:25 red seven? 04:54:26 The OLPC XO comes preinstalled with Fedora, but most of the folks who get 'em don't ever find out - their OS isn't particularly relevant to them. 04:54:41 (The same way the exact specifics of my car engine aren't particularly relevant to me, I imagine.) 04:54:58 * rbergeron has a turbo and that's all that matters. vroom vroom 04:55:15 although i have a penchant for figuring out how to do my own car repairs 04:55:17 rbergeron: PHX dealer who sells machines with ubuntu preintsalled 04:55:28 I think system76, dell and some other stuff. 04:55:34 oh, i think i know who you're talking about... guadalupe and mcclintock 04:55:46 oh, thinkpads 04:55:46 * rbergeron took a laptop or three there 04:56:02 thinkpads have a lot of install options 04:56:18 I <3 my thinkpad 04:56:28 * mchua is reminded of the opening section of "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" where various OSes are compared to cars 04:56:37 i think one of the big problems for people wanting to do fedora preinstalled is that most purchasers expect some sort of length of life from their PC where they aren't going to have to upgrade 04:56:47 for example, dell has like... the three-year warranty exntended you can get 04:57:03 and if fedora isn't supported those full three years, it puts them in a hard spot as far as suppport goes. 04:57:09 ugh, i need to already clean my desk again... be in and out 04:57:18 rbergeron: thats true 04:57:31 * PhrkOnLsh wonders if red seven does Ubuntu LTS or latest release 04:57:56 for engineers, it's not really a big deal 04:58:12 the boy's sweet, sweet, SWEET AS HONEY new hp came with... 04:58:15 oh, i dunno 04:58:23 i think it came with windows vista, unfortunately 04:58:42 and that was basically a wipe everything minus a miniscule amount of space for windows games 04:58:50 and everything else went to F11. 04:59:12 after going through the hell of trying to repartition windows vista... vomit 04:59:32 not to digress 04:59:44 rbergeron: buy a winxp cd for gaming... it's better for gaming than vista, and easier to handle... 04:59:54 but i think that's why there's not a lot of fedora in universities, or general off the shelf 04:59:57 rbergeron: and you're OK with upgrading every so often, and know what the release cycle's like - I wonder how many folks are like that. 05:00:01 * mchua nods 05:00:03 * PhrkOnLsh has had the worst luck in getting gaming on wine 05:00:12 PhrkOnLsh: that doesn't work when you're a raiding world of warcraft nerd :) 05:00:27 rbergeron: as a second data point, I was talking to a friend of mine who's in robotics research; they run Fedora in their lab 05:00:35 But they're on FC... 6, I think it was. 05:00:36 rbergeron: WoW works in wine, i think... at least in crossover, I'm sure 05:00:39 windows 7 is actually just far, far superior to vista and xp 05:00:50 CalPoly SLO runs Fedora 11 05:00:50 PhrkOnLsh: it's just really... laggy. 05:00:57 rbergeron: ahh 05:00:59 With all sorts of weird deltas they now have to maintain. 05:01:03 * PhrkOnLsh isn't a WoWer and hasn't tried 05:01:11 and the souped up video stuff... nvidia... enough said 05:01:30 * mchua trying to avoid a WoW addiction, has never touched the stuff 05:01:40 Continuously temped, though. Continuously. 05:01:40 mchua: +1 :) 05:01:53 not tempted though, just a passing curiousity :) 05:02:00 * PhrkOnLsh has no time for silly games :P 05:02:10 * mchua is easily distracted by swords. 05:02:25 rbergeron: as for windows 7, there are things i like and things that annoy me to h%$^, like the new taskbar 05:02:38 yeah, i avoid it 05:03:05 FC6... back to what mchua said 05:03:10 Actually, I wonder - the upgrade experience stuff the Desktop crew is working on, how much will that help with what rbergeron mentioned (with the support/release/update cycle being something that subtly makes people not use Fedora)? 05:03:12 that's like... insanely long ago 05:03:16 Yes. 05:03:24 well, i don't think it makes -people- not use fedora 05:03:38 i think it makes Big Marketing Machines like Dell not sell it 05:04:08 and most people, if they're paying, whatever, 500, 1k, 1.5k for a laptop 05:04:26 they don't want to have to screw around with upgrades unless they absolutely have to. 05:04:50 although, i guess that is a lot of windows at work there, the legacy brain experience 05:04:54 "every time i upgrade it is fail" 05:05:25 i know a LOT of people on macs who have no problem shelling out whatever every year to upgrade to the next version, on their laptops that are far pricier than what a standard dell or hp or lenovo would be. 05:05:38 maybe they're doing something right. 05:05:52 i think it maybe is the "you upgrade and it -still- just works" thing 05:06:00 word of mouth 05:06:02 i'm not sure 05:06:15 This is more or less the reason why we have Fedora and RHEL - RHEL's the stable, long-term-supported thing, it Works and it will Keep on Working 05:06:28 Fedora is "WHEEE INNOVATION!" 05:06:31 exactly 05:06:45 so wheeee innovation is GREAT for software engineers 05:06:52 and RHEL also has that 'E' in there, for enterprise. 05:06:59 EVERYTHING works, everything builds, everyting is the latest and greatest. 05:07:03 But RHEL isn't easily accessible to vendors like Dell, due to licensing costs. And CentOS hasn't really been stable enough (in the community sense) for them to latch on 05:07:30 well 05:07:39 i think another problem related to that, phrk, is that whole 05:07:43 "throat to choke" thing 05:07:47 nobody is paying for fedora 05:07:57 if people are paying for rhel, well, dell and come and throttle someone. 05:07:58 hm? 05:08:03 you can't come and throttle community voluneers. 05:08:12 wow, i can't type. 05:08:17 I'm not sure I follow, rbergeron :) 05:08:19 sorr 05:08:26 I think I'm going to bed soonish 05:08:29 dell will come and have a chit chat with someone high up, if rhel isn't working, and isn't getting the attention needed. 05:08:35 eventually. 05:08:40 rbergeron: ah, yeah. 05:08:43 because there is money being transferred around. 05:08:53 there's no "pay for fedora support" option 05:08:55 therefore 05:09:00 no throat to choke :) 05:09:03 Well, there could be. 05:09:04 yup yup 05:09:11 mchua: explain 05:09:14 And in some ways, there is. 05:09:44 Example: I can get a VM on a bunch of shared hosting sites that run F11 (or something relatively recent) 05:10:06 the throat is our reputation, in a sense. you can go internal and talk to rhel, or you can whine about fedora publicly 05:10:07 mchua: talk, and then i have something to talk about related to something poelcat blogged about 05:10:13 * rbergeron is just reminding herself 05:10:21 if there's a problem there that's actually a Fedora bug, I have a *little* escalation-fu to my hosting provider to get Someone Else to fix that problem for me. 05:10:23 PhrkOnLsh: that is a point 05:10:39 Also, there's nothing stopping folks from offering independent "Fedora consulting services" 05:10:42 yes, that's true 05:11:01 EOF 05:11:06 but is someone like dell going to go talk to "fedora consulting services" or are they going to talk to the people writing the code 05:11:33 if the people writing the code == "random volunteers who could hypothetically disappear at any moment," neither 05:11:39 i guess a bigger question is, do we care if dell is selling PCs with F13 on them or not... or is the general public not the target market 05:11:44 Alright you two, I'm going to go clean up a bit, I may be back later 05:11:49 * mchua waves to PhrkOnLsh 05:11:51 * rbergeron waves 05:11:54 au revoir 05:12:06 rbergeron: Honestly, I do not. At least not right now. 05:12:38 Or rather, I care about contributions rather than usage. 05:12:44 * rbergeron nods 05:13:02 (While acknowledging using Fedora is usually a prerequisite for contributing to it.) 05:13:18 Will Dell selling PCs with F13 on them increase our contribution-fu? 05:13:22 Probably. 05:13:23 * rbergeron is looking at poelcat's most recent blog statement :) but that's not the one im' referring to here in a moment 05:13:38 well. maybe an increase in abrt bugs :) 05:13:41 It is the highest leverage thing we could do to increase our contribution-fu? Probably not. 05:13:45 * mchua chuckles 05:13:47 rbergeron: true, dat. 05:14:42 ok, so he had this ..... http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/fedora-on-a-dell-xps-m1330/ 05:14:51 and that kind of combined with that mail you forwarded from tiemann 05:14:56 It's one of the reasons why I've chosen to spend my time... say, teaching bootcamps to professors on how to get their classes involved in open source contribution, rather than figuring out how to talk with $large_pc_supplier. 05:14:58 got me on the train of 05:15:01 * mchua reads 05:15:11 why do we not have a list of ... things that "just work" 05:15:17 i mean, we hope all things will just work 05:15:26 but it seems like.... we have enough people, probably with enough varying laptops 05:15:39 that everyone could take... a bit of time and say, i tried to install, and it just worked. 05:15:44 or it didn't. 05:15:56 i hate to call it a 05:16:04 "fedora happiness certified PC program" 05:16:10 but 05:16:23 and i think it somewhat implies that maybe some things don't work 05:16:38 rbergeron: I've been thinking about that. 05:16:38 Three things immediately jump to my mind, not sure how they fit in yet, but... 05:16:41 http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/ 05:16:43 but even if we had a list of say... themost popular laptops and desktops 05:16:48 mostly laptops since that's where drama usually lies 05:16:51 http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki 05:17:19 we shoould really be making an effort to make sure those things will work. 05:17:23 and https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/FedoraMini/Hardware 05:17:40 (the latter is easily made during a http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days) 05:17:48 are there any ways to allow anonymous submission to FI? With review of course 05:18:04 PhrkOnLsh: Yes. 05:18:08 really? 05:18:29 Well, in the workflow in my mind (and on https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Insight#Content_workflow) there is 05:18:30 hopefully something is blocking the submission of my latest story on how v14gra will help? 05:18:33 We could have a category "Fedora Install HOWTOS" where people write up (starting with a template) special instructions for $computer, and that gets pushed to insight 05:18:38 1) they are contributing 05:18:45 * rbergeron nods 05:18:50 2) we are growing the database, as this category would be browsable 05:19:20 (basically, links to existing content are submitted, and screened by editors - those editors can publish anonymous content, too, or they can put the byline of the original/guest writer on - the latter will usually be the case) 05:19:28 (think... engadget) 05:19:30 If jrandom comes into #fedora saying "hey i just installed fedora, everything was simply stellar" we could do a quick "hey do you have five minutes? 05:19:35 * rbergeron notes that http://www.insidemylaptop.com/ is SO AWESOME 05:20:05 mchua: by anonymous I meant not-in-fas, not nameless, but that is good :) 05:20:20 PhrkOnLsh: I actually wonder... if... I'm thinking about fedora-tour now. 05:20:31 mchua: hmm :) 05:20:36 When you install Fedora from scratch, it prompts you at the end if you want to submit your smolt profile. 05:20:42 If you say yes, it automagically ships it off. 05:20:54 But what if - in Fedora-tour, or something - by the little "contribute" section, it went a bit further? 05:21:08 And said "hey, here are some things we'd love for you to check, and see if they work - try doing X, Y, Z" 05:21:42 and then a few minutes later, "congratulations you just submitted your first test case! now go see where it went, and who's going to pick it up from there..." 05:21:52 oh, that'd be interesting. 05:21:52 hmmm 05:21:55 yeah 05:21:58 "follow the open source white rabbit" 05:22:02 i like it 05:22:03 "hopefully down the rabbit hole" 05:22:04 :) 05:22:23 redpill! 05:22:39 follow the white rabbit, neo 05:22:42 (the Matrix, obviously, got the colors mixed up. Blue should be down the rabbit hole.) 05:23:04 take the redpill, install the blue linux :P 05:23:26 (stolen from -social's topic :) ) 05:23:26 I pull out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition a lot - the first time you do something, most people want a step-by-step instruction 05:23:40