Report Software Freedom Days First semester 2017: 25th February, 25th march, 22nd april, 27th may & 24th june. *plus* Fete 1st June
We have many many positive stories and only one negative one to tell. Before doing this, I did put my other professional skills to work because the number of visitors never went over ~25 since January and this started to worry me a lot! So in April, we had the Presidential elections in France on 23rd April precisely and we had 12 people only. I therefore took this opportunity to query previous visitors who gave their email addresses the reason of seeing them once, twice or thrice to the most. Using Social Media allows me not to spam visitors. On over 100 emails sent, we had a 50% response: their openSUSE installation just works fine and they were still discovering this and that. Seven had VLC issues (sic) and overcame it by using other music software and others in streaming films etc. One of them was a Ubuntu guy and he said that since I repaired his Ubuntu machine, he had not need to come over for now. It therefore must be seen as a “resistance / political” move when people go for FOSS and this is shared by the “left wing”, labor party, socialists etc. The left was in the process of losing the elections did not help morale! I do not mix politics and being a Geek, but for some people FOSS in France means defiance, anti capitalism et al. The audience for 27th May was the aftermath of final presidential elections of 7Th May but we had 22 people. May is also the month in France with many holidays. The city organizes every year a fete in each municipal premises to pave the way to Summer Holidays and debrief of past year activities, games, shows, food and the 1st June arrived, we were there as every year. Here went leaflets, stickers and other materials. SFD in June was a prelude or epilogue of first semester. I am now going to narrate only the salient stories: 1. Two guys came from the “Repair Café” (they repair everything, toasters, kettles, fridges, computers…) to learn openSUSE and pick some DVDs for installation. This is interesting because our “club” has a good reputation since 2001. They always knew about us but they are pretty busy on Saturdays. 2. We had a few associations asking for old machines. I do need to get an openSUSE 32 bit distribution before making a donation. 3. A good man came some 150 kms away (Amiens), spent the night in Rouen with his wife in an hotel and was very motivated indeed. I did tell him that he could start a chapter there and that I will come over to help him for his first meetings. This happened in May, so I guess that he will start his project end of year or 2018. We will do to Amiens, there is a nice pastry shop there…. 4. Many chance visitors curious and somehow already using some other Linux, 35% willing to try openSUSE and did take a DVD to play with. 5. We had some luck with WSL. This is really for people who do not want using dual boot and/or vmWare et al. Some of them have new machines bought last Christmas and did not want to give their family a shock with another OS. I blogged on WSL since last February starting with this one : http://www.nui.fr/blog/installer-les-services-linux-de-windows-10-wsl-opensuse/ Many geeks are nostalgic of command.com so WSL brings some happiness and lately PowerShell (I need to blog on PowerShell for Linux) appeared…. 6. We had Raspberry sessions, especially remote administration, ssh, nginx, ftp… 7. I have bought most bits and pieces for the photobooth too, just waiting for a lamp tripod to arrive. 8. We held many sessions on Home Networking. We own a 4G router, so we can easily simulate a home network with firewalling etc. When there was the Ransomware blackmailing, we helped people securing email etc. 9. I had two SFD sessions post Saturday event as the boxes were so badly affected that I did it at home on two Sundays. 10. Sadly, I must admit that we had just one negative story. The reason is more a medical one. As a matter of fact, despite spending hours of work getting openSUSE 42.2 running on an HP box, the lady asked to revert to Windows, because she was suffering from a kind of breakdown, burnt out to be more precise…. No more questions asked, and I personally made a Windows 10 Installation with all the patches L 11. openStreetMaps did not come at all this year, busy? 12. Our Greek lady was there each month with a particular issue. 13. Some members came with cakes, biscuits at all the sessions and we got coffee, tea and cold drinks/water going as usual. This does make a difference as spending hours with all these machines up and running, it’s noisy, warm, so some refreshment is a plus. 14. The dates for the second semester 2017 and Second semester 2018 are booked, just need to advertise. 2017 date September 09 Associations day, will use as tremplin for launching openSUSE 42.3 September 16 World SFD - openSUSE 42.3 will be the master piece October 28 November 25 December 23 2018 January 27 February 24 Match 24 April 28 May 26 June 23 Sorry, I did not indulge in reporting earlier, my contract was coming to an end with Thales on June 30th, so I was busy getting things done. We had a lot of fun indeed J Best, -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscr...@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+ow...@opensuse.org
