I have hosted a meetup on OpenBSD a month ago - just a general
introduction into
the system, plus pledge / unveil, plus dynamic kernel relinking, etc,
etc. About
thirty people has attended. And you know, the audience welcomes that
type of
simple stuff and asks for continuation. I know there are russian
speaking developers
in the community. Please reach out to me directly if you're interested
in giving
a talk on anything around OpenBSD or just discussing. Venue and audience
are on me.

Ilya

On 2020-05-14 18:03, Austin Hook wrote:
> Bravo, Aisha,
>
>   I myself was wondering why "advocacy" no longer shows up on the lists of 
> OpenBSD mailing lists.  It was a nice place to discuss ideas that are not 
> just confined to technical software matters.  I see that is still works 
> however.  Next thing is to ask the devs if they would consider putting it 
> back.  
>
> Austin 
>
>
> On Thu, 14 May 2020, Aisha Tammy wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>   I was wondering why this list is a bit dead (?!) and hoping to gain 
>> some ideas for maybe reviving it.
>>
>> I totally understand that most people at openbsd are devs and would
>> like to focus more on coding than advocacy so I was wondering if people
>> like me who are not that techy (mostly small ports) can help with
>> this part.
>>
>> I am open to constructive criticism, so please forgive me if I seem
>> out of touch. I have been subscribed for close to a month and didn't
>> notice a lot of things happening around here :( so I was hoping
>> to spice things up a tiny bit.
>>
>> Most of the ways in which I have tried previously is my creating
>> whole bunch of small openbsd github projects and sharing them on reddit
>> and twitter. But like this is barely scratching the surface of social
>> media. I feel like there is a lot more that could be done :)
>>
>> Some of the basic things which I feel like are low hanging fruits
>>
>> (1) Showcasing tutorials on setting up small projects.
>>
>> One of the things that people get a good feeling from (me included)
>> is when we manage to get some service running, no matter how small
>> or insignificant it is. Like getting my znc setup, I was riding on 
>> that high for like 2 weeks (I know this sounds a bit dumb cuz I am 
>> a noob, but it was pretty nice to feel like I accomplished something).
>>
>> So it might be nice to  show how to set up small services.
>> I mean things like setting up a blog (using worpress or similar),
>> or a wiki, or a hugo/jekyll website.
>>
>> There are a lot of really nice blog posts by a lot of cool people
>> which show work arounds (for quirks) for these things in OpenBSD. 
>>
>> It might be nice to have some kind of highlights page at openbsd
>> which shows these nice links. (I know undeadly.org exists but is 
>> not pointed to by openbsd.org, would be nice if that could be done
>> if nothng else is possible)
>>
>> I feel like while OpenBSD has really awesome benefits, the communication 
>> of these with the community could do with some work.
>>
>> (2) Having a bit more of a social presence
>>
>> Doesn't need to be facebook/twitter. I know undeadly.org has some really nice
>> articles with highlight for nice things happening in the tech/ports lists
>> but unfortunately undeadly is not that well known 
>>
>> While I am by no means a social media expert I still feel the lack of 
>> presence of OpenBSD in general media articles and published stories.
>>
>> I am open to some idea about how to try and increase this part.
>> Some ways I can think of:
>>   A) Getting in contact with news letter publishers and letting them
>>      know of nice developments that have happened. I don't think that
>>      linux news letters would be averse to having openbsd information
>>      sent on them.
>>      I am sure a lot of them would love if we send them information
>>      and do some of the work of finding articles for them, which ties 
>>      into my previous part of having a highlights page
>>   B) Having an official blog
>>      I feel like this is a pretty important thing, especially in nowadays,
>>      where most things are spread online. Having an official blog will make 
>>      things very easy for a lot of people to get interested. I am sure that 
>>      there are quite a lot of people willing to chip in for this part if it 
>>      was announced that there is going to be such an endeavor. 
>>   C) (A controversial point) Trying to make things look a bit more
>>      stylistic (please don't kill me T.T )
>>      While I agree that clarity is the most important part a small amount 
>>      of color in the official documentation is not the worst thing in 
>>      the world. I am open to this part being thrown out.
>>
>> (3) Showcasing a page for people to get involved in various parts of 
>> the project
>>
>> Currently the pipeline to get involved seems like
>> try out obsd -> find something you find is not working or you don't like ->
>> find person working on it -> contact them -> bug report/patch to change
>> (have I missed something?)
>> This seems to be a tried and true pipeline which has worked so far.
>> It might also be good to have a page of open quests/projects in openbsd
>> where new people can contribute without having to delve too deep into 
>> system code. This was inspired by my recent forays into string algorithms
>> on OpenBSD (nothing wrong with them, just that I was looking around and 
>> trying to see what could be changed/improved).
>>
>> Having devs post TODOs and help needed/appreciated into a web page allows for
>> interested parties to get a better look at ongoing projects.
>>
>> Currently I haven't figured out anyway to see what current new projects
>> are being developed in OpenBSD. I feel like showcasing ongoing projects
>> is just as important as showing completed ones in the highlights.
>>
>> (While watching presentations are conferences is definitely one way to see
>> ongoing projects it is nowhere near and optimal approach)
>>
>> ----
>>
>> These three were my main points in sending this email.
>> Sorry that it got a bit long in the process.
>>
>> Any things that I might be wrong about, I assure you I mean nothing harmful
>> so do let me know what I have missed and erred on.
>> I am only started using OpenBSD for a short while for less than 7-8 months 
>> but I feel like in those 7-8 months a lot of the things that I have learned 
>> could
>> have benefited from the above points to make the transition simpler :)
>>
>> These are my personal thoughts so take them with handful of salt.
>>
>> Hope you all are staying safe,
>> Aisha
>>

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