Installfest

[Gough, Chris]

Brad Hards wrote:
>> Perhaps we can arrange the next CLUG meeting to be at Bruce Campus?
> I like this idea too (except that I will be in Austria for the next
> meeting - perhaps the September meeting?), and maybe the meeting could be
a bit

Either next meeting or September would be good - whatever is more
convenient.
I concour that a general talk on Open Source would be good - Yesterday I met
with final semester students about their "big project", and more than half
of them wanted make VB / MS Access systems. I would be great to nip that
sort of thing in the bud, most of the students seem oblivious to the open
source world.

> examples of things to do:
> * bring PCs, do installs or updates off someones Debian cache (?) and
> RPM store. burn CDs.

I had thought about pre burning Debian CDs, but the catch is while i have
the HOD's support for the idea of holding an installfest (hence the
availability of space), his condition was that I don't get involved in
handling student's money. If students (or whoever else attends) didn't bring
a box, at least they should all be able to take home a distro...

> * bring scratch boxes, make LTSP setup. play with net boot (bring eproms, 
> burner, eraser, old net cards).

Good idea. I would like learn how to do that myself.

> * multiplayer games (and anything else that might appeal to students and
the 
> great unwashed / unconverted).
> * Other Cool Stuff (tm)
>
> The only thing is that it'd be good to have network access (even if it
> was bandwidth throttled) to show some features.

The lecture theatres at Bruce CIT all have a single point of access to the
CIT network. Through that, there is limited access to the internet
(including a HTTP proxy). I don't how much networking stuff I can gather -
at home I live out of a 10 Mb/s hub. Also, there may be some issues about a
rampant subnet of Linux newborn's gasping for their first breath on the CIT
network - I can anticipate objections to that. Probably safest to set up an
isolated network, the use the CIT network for demo's.

> Maybe an earlier start (1730 or 1800?). Door prizes?
... more linux CD's perhaps

Red Hat kindly gave scholarships to some CIT students (from a different
department), so I suspect they might send along a Red Hat advocate if
invited. Perhaps even some box-set's that could be used as door prizes (I'm
sure the Australian Big-Wig's business card is floating around the faculty).
I have mixed fealings about this though, because to my mind the best outcome
would be get some of the students enthusiastic about Open-Source in general,
as well as improving their UNIX competency beyond the introductory course.
Debian seems a better fit with this objective, although I also think that
some of Open-Sources benifits flow from the diversity it fosters, so perhaps
"the more the merrier".

Chris Gough