Czajkowski

The last Geeknic was such a great success we thought we’d have another one during Summer. I use the summer word lightly as well you never know what kind of weather you can expect.

This time instead of the city center, we’re going to go to Farmleigh park, which is located in Phoenix park and was the home of the Guinness Family. Once a month they have a farmers market and we’ll be there on the August bank holiday when they have the farmers market on.

August Bank Holiday Weekend

WHEN: Sunday 2nd August @ 1pm

WHERE : Farmleigh Park

WHY: Somewhere different, it is also having a farmers market that day,

HOW TO GET THERE: Loads of ways to get there

We had a great turn out at the last Geeknic and it was a change from the pub, so looking forward to seeing people at this event!

Ubuntu-ie Geeknic Gathering

Like many people I use IRC, and with that I use the freenode network. I’m in a few channels and a lot of them are Ubuntu related, I also have my own channel for Ossbarcamp. But Ubuntu isn’t the only group on there, there are many other organisations and groups of people who use their services.

With that in mind, Christel, the charmer that she is asked me this week would I be interested in coming on board and helping to promote the freenode community.  The events that take place, when, where and most importantly who to contact to get more information, as I know I find that annoying when trying to get information and I want more. I also believe the more people that know about your event the better it can be also inform more people gaining interest in your area.

Firstly, I’m going to start with getting as many groups to tell me about their events and where they are on, so I can add them to a calender which will be on the freenode site and everyone can see it, this will help get the word out about your event to let others who may be near by know about it and gain exposure for your event.  Secondly if folks have calender feeds set up I’d like to import them also.  This is for face to face meetings, conferences, Demos, meetings, talks etc, not really for IRC Meetings. Just let us know the date of the event, where it’s taking place, time of the event, if there is a link to it and who to contact.

If you want to let me know about your events please do, you can nab me on the freenode network as czajkowski, or leave a comment on here.

Finally we got around to applying for our official status. The Irish LoCo has been active for over 2 years.   Now we’re approved. We’ve ran release parties,  face to face meet ups and organised software freedom day.

Recently one of our members has taken over Irish Translations so hopefully we’re gonna get moving on that.  At UDS we discussed bug jams, but also the need for other types, so I’m organising a Summer Jam. A day of bug squashing and translations followed by a BBQ.

Hopefully we’ll have more events and spread the ubuntu hugs n love, minus the ubuflu.

Ubuntu-IE LoCo

Seems to be feast of famine with me. Either nothing to do or half a dozen things all to be done at the same time! This week I was talking to Elizabeth Krumbach on the #ubuntu-women channel and she mentioned one of her mates was over here with work, I suggested he mail the Ubuntu-ie mailing list and we’d go for a PotD. So a bunch of us met up and went to the Bull and Castle and met Mike from the states for a few quiet ones. Same goes to anyone who is ever over here, drop us an email to meet up and we’ll pop along, always nice to meet new people.

I’ve also been working on trying to find a venue for a summer jam, a day of bug finding and Irish translations for the LoCo, so with a lot of venues closing for the summer, I’ve decided to have it in my house followed by a BBQ. Great combination and hopefully we’ll get cracking on the translations.

This week also saw the Irish LoCo apply for its approval so we’ve been busy working on the application, and I managed not to break the wiki which is good going for me! Rory and myself worked on some of it and finding the links to events, then we started to work on the NGO project which I signed up for at UDS. So looking forward to getting stuck more into that next week.

Finally, I’ve working on my pet project. I ran an barcamp last March and decided to run another in September. So clearing down the old site and getting the new one up with the help of James who is a master at making things all pretty!  I’ve a new logo thanks to the very creative Catalan LoCo. I spotted one of their t-shirts at UDS and thought it would be nice to use it.It’s finally back up and will eventually be ready to have sign ups and talks people want to hear, who knows I may be brave enough and do a small one myself

I recently got an email asking how does one set up an OSS group/tech meet up, I guess there are a few ways  to do it, but I’m go to go by what I did and my experience.

…After college I moved back to Athlone and since then a few of us “Techies” in the surrounding areas have been having (ir)regular meetings to just discuss anything and everything on various geek/tech related topics (along with having a few pints). We’re now looking at setting up something a little more formal or rather something more organised and publicised etc.

I’m pretty much just looking for any pointers you may have for starting and building up such a group and getting the word out and getting people interested. Initially we’d like to launch a website and maybe have a couple of events but seen as we’d be pretty small and have pretty much zero resources to begin with we’d probably be looking at arranging transportation for people to get to larger events in Dublin and other places.

Right, well firstly I got into OSS at college, I got ropped in as treasurer for our  computer society, and realised soon enough we had money to spend. So decided to get speaker in and down to us to give talks.  Face to face meetings and being able to ask a question to a person who is working on a project is very worthwhile.  You can maybe see a demo of what they are talking about, ask more questions or even get to try what people are working on.

You don’t need any resources to do any of the following, initially I’d say get a website up, and possibly use IRC depending on the people, you can create your own channel on freenode and invite people to it and get discussion going.  I also find getting colleges and staff at colleges involved really helpful, they’ll help with a venue, use a lecture room and get someone to give a talk or demo something they like to use or are working on.

So I would always say if and when possible have a face to face meet up, IRC, mailing list and forums are all great but you’ll get more outta the meet up. How best to organise the meet up is the next task.  If it’s just a regular want to catch up and find out the newest version of an OS to play with or what gadget is out now that everyone wants (Yes I want the N97).  We use a PotD – a Pint of the Day meet up on the 1st Thursday of the month, you can always find us in the Longstone pub from 7pm onwards.  It’s a given and we fire an email off letting folks know about it.  You can call impromptu ones, name a pub, pick a day and fire off a mail to folks saying you’ll be there and if folks want to turn up.

For more formal meet ups, some folks pick a venue where they can have presentations, so in these recession times, hotels may let you use a small room for free if you tell them you have 15 -20 people coming along and will happily go for  a few pints(during)  afterwards.  That way you can have people give talks on their projects and have a discussion group.

For getting the word out, I find mailing lists very useful, but that only works if people suscribe and you can miss stuff if you’ve a weekly or daily digest and don’t get around to it. Make use of social networks, Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook and blogs, the latter mean you can get more feedback, and others can see who’s going so that can be sometimes an incentive to go to an event.

For larger events, if you can get in touch with people doing IT related podcasts, or get other people to blog about it, I tend to contact people I’ve been very lucky to make contact in the past with who write for national and local newspapers and IT sites so they have been very good and helped me publicise these events.

Also coming to events that are run locally and taking part is a great way to meet people, I’m running another Ossbarcamp in September so keep that in mind and see if your group wants to come along. Drop us a line to the Ubuntu-ie channel on freenode and come along to any of our events or take part in the discussions. Would be great to meet more people.

Anyways as I said, this is just what I’ve found has worked, there are many ways, and I’m sure others have some more ideas.