[Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

I would like propose that we start a community outreach team that helps members of our community in getting to Linux shows and Electronics Shows to help spread the word about Maemo and the Nokia Phone/Internet Tablets. Members who wish to be sponsored to go on outreach trips would have to request to be part of the outreach team and be evaluated by either maemo.org community council, or maybe paid members of maemo.org team. Once accepted to the outreach team members would then have to request sponsorship in some kind of a formal form 60 days prior to the event they wish to be sponsored to attend. The community council or who ever is put in charge of this would then decided if this event should be sponsored and how much to give in helping the team member getting there. Amount of sponsorship could depend on distance from show, length of show, what member would be doing at show(ie some shows require payment to have a table in their expo room).

If approved things like things like table fee would be paid straight to the show so team member never handles that money. Money for team member to go to show would be either paid up front or could be in reimbursement after the show. Large expenses like hotel rooms should require of registration for room, or receipt. Food/Gas could be paid in a set amount like $40 per day for food and so much per gas depending on distance. We could create kits of things like flyers and posters/banners for tables at event. Those would be created by who ever is put in charge of outreach team and would be mailed to team members before going to first event. They would keep kit after event and request more disposable supplies like flyers before new events.

Members should be required to be active and attend at least one event per calendar year. Those not going to events should be removed from team to make room for more people. Some requirements for team should include, owning at least one Nokia device that runs Maemo. This device should be run either Current OS or one generation back(no need in going out and showing off OS2005 at linux show). They should be an active member in community on either forums, IRC, or Mailing Lists. Team members must be able to talk to strangers about the maemo, explain what it is and if possible be able to do BoF or Session at the show they go to.

Now everyone might be thinking that this is a great idea but where would money come from. I am also requesting that Nokia would create a budget and give the money to maemo.org to cover this. Since we would be advertising not only the maemo.org community but the Nokia devices as well.

I look forward on hearing everyones idea on this and I hope this helps to grow the maemo.org communty.

Brainstorm Link

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Wow, this sounds like an excellent idea! You're right, we need to increase exposure and spread the word about Maemo so more people get involved!

About the budget, I certainly agree that Nokia should offer a budget for us to take matters into our own hands - but I have my doubts that Nokia will agree to this?

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Um... Andrew? How did you miss my outreach project thread in the Community section?

;)

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Sorry if I mistook your thread but I didn't read all 20 pages of it, looked like you were starting outreach in your locate area not the whole world, also I didn't see anything about helping people with the cost of going to these shows. Also think of proposal as going one step further and trying to help get resources to get more people to shows. I'm not trying to work against you :)

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

There's certainly nothing wrong with your proposal and in fact I plan to steal some of it. :D But a few points:

- I'm starting local as a pilot, with intent to create a template that can be used globally
- I didn't see this as a Brainstorm although I won't quibble with someone else seeing it that way
- ultimately my goals and scope are the same as yours

Bottom line, I got tired of inaction on the subject and decided to Just Do It rather than worry about Brainstorming. I've put a tremendous amount of work into it and am gaining momentum despite the occasional setback and fatigue. I am certainly looking for feedback because, again, the model I develop now should be able to work anywhere. And of course I can cover Dallas and possibly nearby areas but that's about it. ;)

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

lnk?
first I've heard about this. I've been doing this very thing from my own pocket for 4 yrs now. I'd love some community assistance, and even more to be a "paid" member of the community. Temporary consulting isn't cutting it, and I feel mobiles is my calling, but don't see a clear path to start. I'm almost ready to work for a carrier, but US carriers suck butt...

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

my project: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38247

A word of caution: word I have is that Nokia is not going to be throwing a lot of money at this, and they're looking for proof it's useful for Maemo. I have tentative approval for small dinner expenses right now but that's it. I have to build a business case for more.

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Hi, http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...outreach_team/ needs a split between the explanation of the problem and listed solutions.

Quite the opposite, I would say. We have an interest in increasing the presence and activity of the Maemo community in events. There is a growing interest and many organizers contact us directly to send people to give a talk, staff a stand... There is also a growing interest from Maemo contributors to jump out of the Internet to the physical World to spread the word and have fun, and again a problem is that we can't be everywhere.

Texrat asks about Texas, andrewfblack asks for other US events, mikhas asked yesterday about LinuxTag in Berlin and so on.

To me the solution would be to agree on a budget with the Council for such activities and they would decide how to operate with it (to be honest, we don't want to be in the discussion of who to support with how much money).

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Looks like our next step would be to get You and Council to agree on a budget. Since I'm not part of Council I would assume that now I have to just wait and see what comes of this. I would like to be in with the planing and talks about this subject though I just don't want to over step the Council on this. I might be shooting for the stars here but I would really like to see a budget around $20,000 that should fully pay for forty, two-day shows or eighty one-day shows. Including, room, food and a little for gas. It might seem like a lot of money but considering how much Nokia spends on summit each year this is just a drop in the bucket.

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Actually I only talk about Texas as a pilot. ;) My ultimate scope is bigger.

I'm also wanting to look into other ways of funding .org activities besides hitting up Nokia. Maybe there are other forms of sponsorship we can tap...

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Building on my last post...

On one hand it's seductive and natural to look to Nokia for some sort of funding of community-led outreach. I'm actually surprised something isn't already in place along those lines, from Nokia.

But I've personally been running into wall after wall trying to find out how it can happen, which isn't surprising: I've been inside the Nokia matrix and know firsthand how big and crazy it can get. Anyway so far I'm hearing some "maybe this can happen" but a heck of a lot more "NO"s and "I don't know"s when it comes down to it.

So the question remains: how do we get funding? Maybe we should not depend on Nokia. Maybe we need to partner with other for-profit organizations and offer them service in return. Maybe a sponsor's approved logo appears prominently on flyers and posters.

I don't want to sell out, but then, I don't want to give up on grassroots community activities either. Maybe we can find balance.

Does anyone have examples of how this has worked with other organizations? Could we get, say, IBM to chip in? And should we?

One thing I would like to see from Nokia: a few N900s to offer as door prizes (drawings) at events like the upcoming Texas Linux Fest.

Re: maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

fwiw http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...outreach_team/ is still missing a split between problem and solution.

I'm confident I can get budget for something like this. In an ideal world we would get one invoice, pay the funding and be done from Nokia's side. The rest would be handled by the Maemo community. However, that possibility doesn't exist and this is where the problems start.

Today one community contributor asks for a "small" (for Nokia) amount of money that (for Nokia) is complicated to pay in order to make some maemo.org promotion in an event. Then what? This action doesn't scale well.

Look the request "a budget around $20,000 that should fully pay for forty, two-day shows or eighty one-day shows". Managing all those payments to all those individuals creates an overhead of bureaucracy.

Besides, who decides who are the 40-80 right actions if we get 80-160 requests? Or concurrent requests from different individuals for a same event, with budget to cover only one. We don't really want to be in the middle of these decisions. You want us to concentrate our time in other things.

But anyway, the first step is always to get the budget. Once you have it is easier to distribute it than not having money. ;)

Money is something serious that requires some planning. If you want a marketing budget then you need a marketing plan with a budget estimation. Say, which events do you wish to cover in this semester? How many people at which cost for travel and accommodation? What marketing materials and at which cost of production and transport? What other costs to be considered?

I wouldn't expect to get 20k from anybody without doing this homework first. :)

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

All that is understood. I will do more research.

Open note to the community: if you have events you think are relevant, please post them! (I'll collect here) ie:

Examples:

Barcelona Long Weekend
Consumer Electronics Show 2010
FOSDEM 2010
Mobile World Congress 2010
Nokia Connecting People - Barcelona 2010
Maemo Summit 2010

Invitations:

FOSS Nigeria 2010 - http://fossnigeria.org/

Linuxtag 2010 (Berlin, Germany) - http://www.linuxtag.org/2010/

Akademy 2010 (Tampere, Finland) - http://akademy.kde.org/

OpenMobility conference (Zlin, Czech Republic) - http://mobility.openmoko.cz/

Community Organized:

Maemo Italian Long Weekend, March or April (tentative, somewhere in Italy (undetermined) - http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo-Italian_Long_Weekend

Community Suggestions:

PyCon 2010, Feb-17-2010 to Feb-25-2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA - http://us.pycon.org/2010/about/

SCALE 8x, Feb-19-2010 to Feb-21-2010, Los Angeles, CA, USA - http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale8x/

USENIX FAST '10, Feb-23-2010 to Feb-26-2010 , San Jose, California, USA - http://www.usenix.org/events/fast10/

ICT Spring 2010, Mar-15-2010 to Mar-16-2010, Luxembourg, Luxembourg - http://www.ictspring.com/

Where 2.0, Mar-30-2010 to Apr-01-2010, San Jose, California, USA - http://en.oreilly.com/where2010

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, 04/14/10 - 04/16/10, San Francisco, California, USA - http://events.linuxfoundation.org/ev...oration-summit

IT360° Conference & Expo 2010, Apr-07-2010, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - http://www.it360.ca/

Texas Linux Fest, April 10, 2010, Austin, Texas, USA - http://texaslinuxfest.org/

ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Int'l (CHI), 10-15 April 2010, Atlanta, GA US - http://www.chi2010.org/

Mobile Marketing Forum APAC 2010, Apr-14-2010 to Thursday Apr-15-2010, Singapore, Singapore - http://forum.mmaglobal.com/?q=node/951

LinuxFest Northwest, 04/24/10 to 04/25/10, Bellingham, Washington, USA - http://linuxfestnorthwest.org/

NSDI '10, Apr-28-2010 to Friday Apr-30-2010, San Jose, California, USA - http://www.usenix.org/events/nsdi10/


most events from this page: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Resources/Event-Calendar
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EDIT: let's try focusing on regional and larger events for the most part, especially annual. It would be nice to cover everything and everybody for dozens of local meetups, but Quim is right: probably more trouble than it's worth.

However-- I think we should also consider occasional presentations at certain local user groups. For this all we would need is flyers, devices to demo and perhaps some low-cost "swag" (mugs, tee-shirts). For flyers, I can create an estimate for a one-time bulk order, stock them centrally, and send out as needed. That creates a cost Nokia would be more open to rather than continuous request for more and more materials. And we can monitor consumption rate to see when a re-order would be required.

Similar with device giveaways. I would suggest we reserve those for large events, and limit to 3 or less. Once we have a roster of such events, quantifying this one-time cost also becomes easy.

Etc etc etc.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Just a quick query on what kind of events - I don't 'do' trade shows, but there are plenty of academic conferences that would provide interesting breeding ground (e.g. CHI) - this is interesting for a few reasons - customers who are keen on shiny things, yes, but also those who are prepared to put time and energy and their own money (grants) into making fun things happen on the device.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

FYI, Community flyer update: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...818#post498818

Printing these is one expense. ;)

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

I do know that a couple of years ago there was Maemo involvement with university students in Beijing, so it's not unprecedented. In fact if I remember right there may have been one in India too. But, yeah, we shouldn't limit consideration solely to trade shows and at-large developer events.

EDIT: in fact it makes sense to look at universities near Nokia locations... Stanford, Boston College, University of Helsinki, etc. Maybe even UT Dallas for me. :D Although I would be surprised if Maemo itself did not already have plans for that in the works...

EDIT 2: it would be nice to see first a list of 3rd-party events Nokia already has official plans for. If nothing else we need to avoid duplication of effort.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

I would love to be involved in this. Unfortunately, I live in the arse end of nowhere, where no-one ever held a conference or meet-up. And I know nothing about development. But I'm following with interest! :D

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Trust me, Kathy, since you volunteered you'll get put to work on SOMEthing! :D

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

I just realised the profanity filter is American in choice of language. :D The most I've managed in terms of 'outreach' is telling anyone stupid enough to ask how wonderful the device is. Just wait till I get past May and get really involved. ;)

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Be interesting to know.

As far as academic stuff is concerned, I've already managed to plug it in one paper, with another in the works, and if I can get my little chubby fingers (oh yes, and my brain) to work properly I'll be able to demo something (related to the papers) with it in June at a conf...

No, no, don't thank me :cool:

But more seriously, perhaps, on the side of official things, picking some good conferences to show the thing at wouldn't be too hard.

Nokia even used to sponsor CHI, for instance, so it's not unheard of, and re-routing that through Maemo (maybe) to show the latest cool thing/hardware/software might be something.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Can you explain CHI or offer a link? I'll add it to my list above.

EDIT: nvm, found it.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

List of events updated: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...424#post497424

This really requires some wiki work, and hopefully I'll get to it soon.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Can everyone interested in community outreach and events post here, describing the region(s) they can physically cover and what they would/could do?

Thanks.

EDIT: Andrew, you and/or I can aggregate this and other info into the first post. But I'm also going to create a wiki "meta event" page.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

I can do South East Linux Fest, Floria Linux Show and Atlanta Linux Fest. Also if there are any other shows in the South East I don't know about I can cover them as well. I can work a table in expo hall and give talks and BoFs on Maemo.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

I'm happy to support Andrew at anything within a reasonable driving distance from Florida. ;)

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Andrew, I think this one is gonna need an ad campaign. Just not getting the attention... :o

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

I think more people will put in for sponsorship once we get to the point of really seeing what we can get from Nokia. We need to get together on irc some time and work on our proposal to Nokia. Once people see things moving they will respond better. We have a list of some events and I know we can find a few more.

Let’s just go ahead and base our proposal off sending 1 or 2 people to say 30 events this year. Plan our costs for them, travel money, tablet setup, flyers, signs, stickers, those kinds of things. Go ahead and get our budget set and even if we can’t cover the 30 events I would rather have a little extra in our budget come end of the year.

Also we need to start working out how we will pick who goes to events. Get a good written set of requirements. We can go over details on irc or over PM up to you. Just let me know what time is good for you any day after 5pm central is good for me normally.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

We do need to discuss further... some of your costs are too low, especially considering that this needs to be done from a global perspective. However, we can (and should) break it down into regional chunks.

I can get on IRC at around 6pm Central time.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Warning: I went to a lot of these things for Quarterdeck and they can be quite exhausting. I spent a week in Washington, for example, and never had enough energy (or money) left at the end of the day to eat anywhere but the MacDonalds across the street from my hotel. Of course, that was Comdex.

Re: [Sandbox] maemo.org Community Outreach Team
 

Oh, absolutely. I've attended and/or worked at various events over the past couple of decades, and attending can be just as exhausting as working... depends on one's level of interest. ;)