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Żegnamy forum.suse.pl i witamy forums.opensuse.org

March 31st, 2019 by

Witajcie,

10 września 2004 roku cyberluk wysłał do mnie i do Mirona taką wiadomość:

Witam,

Od początku istnienia Forum uważnie obserwujemy użytkowników i ich wypowiedzi. Wczoraj padła propozycja, żeby zaoferować dwom osobom moderowanie Forum. Dzisiaj po dyskusji na ten temat ustaliliśmy, że faktycznie te osoby dostana status moderatora, oczywiście o ile się na to zgodzą. Jedna z tych osób jest Pan. Czy pasuje Panu status moderatora?
Drugiej osoby na razie nie ujawniamy. Dostanie takiego samego maila.
Oczywiście cala załoga będzie nadal patrzeć, co się dzieje z Forum, ale praca jest pracą i czasami nie ma czasu na zajmowanie sie Forum.
Liczymy na pozytywna odpowiedz. Na razie jest to status moderatora Forum, ale zaczęliśmy się również zastanawiać nad FAQiem, który byłby zbiorem problemów z Forum “w pigułce”. Oczywiście status moderatora wiązałby się z odpowiednimi uprawnieniami przy takim FAQu.

cyberluk

Oczywiście pod domeną forum.suse.pl już wcześniej był dostępny skrypt phpBB. Jednak to połowa 2004 roku spowodowała, że Forum otworzyło się na zwykłych użytkowników. To właśnie zwykli użytkownicy zdominowali Forum, tworzyli jego kontent, zarządzali nim i warto to podkreślić. Początkowo Novell Professional Services, a ostatecznie SUSE Polska, udostępniało nam, polskiej społeczności, zasoby i przestrzeń, z których z pożytkiem dla każdego z nas korzystaliśmy.

W ten sposób przez piętnaście lat zwykli użytkownicy, power userzy, a także ludzie zawodowo związani z branżą IT dzielili się między sobą doświadczeniem na Oficjalnym Polskim Forum SUSE Linux. Czas je pożegnać.

Obecnie przestrzenią dla nas będzie forums.opensuse.org. Będąc bliżej Projektu openSUSE, będzie nam łatwiej włączyć się w różnego rodzaju aktywności i koordynować je. Natomiast zwykli użytkownicy zyskają dostęp do znacznie większej społeczności.

Polska sekcja jest widoczna jako subforum pod adresem forums.opensuse.org lub bezpośrednio forums.opensuse.org/forumdisplay.php/936-Polski

W przypadku problemów z rejestracją, proszę o kontakt: pbojczuk@opensuse.org.

Poradnik przetrwania:
forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/531844-Poradnik-przetrwania-na-forums-opensuse-org?p=2871109

Dostęp do forum.suse.pl będzie ograniczany, a samo Forum wkrótce zamknięte.

Love & bruises,
Przemysław “Stefan” Bojczuk

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Posted in Events, Forums | Comments Off on Żegnamy forum.suse.pl i witamy forums.opensuse.org

Developing developers: From end user to developer

May 6th, 2015 by

We’ve seen how to gather some people and create a community (at least that’s the quick tutorial how it worked for us in Greece).

The product is cool (any product) but here we have people. They should know WHY they join a community as volunteers. Is it because they want to help FLOSS to make the world a better place? Is it because it is Fun? Is it because they like the pros that open source provides? Is it because they like to help other people? Find out WHY people want to join-form a community.

The key to increase the number of the members is to attend to events. Here a quick tutorial how to do that. The best possible scenario is a developer to come to your booth and join the team. But this is 1% possible to happen (maybe less). Usually developers we’re searching, they have their favorite distro/project and they don’t change so easy.

The best thing is to join events where you can find end users (end users = users they’re computer science students where they focus on windows, users that their computer being used for facebook/twitter/office suite). Why? Because those users can do some work that the developers hate. What’s that?

0. Junior Jobs. Write a junior jobs list where someone can find exactly what to do and how to do it. The list could have the following.
1. Report bugs to bugzilla. So developers can fix it (of course developers have to be polite and help end users to provide possible broken data etc).
2. Documentation. Developers just hate to write documentation.
3. Translation. Usually developers use some “strange” language. So if someone asks you, please be polite and reply.
4. Promotion. Everyone call it marketing. The term marketing seems that the distro/project earns money out of promotion. Maybe the best term is engagement. This is needed because if it’s the best distro/project among others, how more potential users will learn about it? And if it’s the best, if no one uses it, then it’s useless.
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Posted in Ambassadors, Events, Marketing | Comments Off on Developing developers: From end user to developer

How to promote your conference

April 11th, 2015 by

Promote your event

Local open source community is bigger now and next step for you is to organise (or join) global conferences. One part of the organisation is the promotion of the conference. You want to have as many visitors as you can.

I will try to write down what I did during openSUSE global conferences and some local events.

BEFORE THE EVENT

0. Web page

There MUST be a web page and a system that accepts registration, paper submission, information etc. Write everything that visitor should know about the conference.
We use OSEM in openSUSE. Check out https://events.opensuse.org

1. Blog blog blog.

You’ll have some announcements for the conference. Dates, the place, new website, call for papers announcement, hotels that visitors can stay, schedule, keynote speakers etc. Usually, every open source project has a central blog or news site. You can write the articles there. Try to make fuzz by publishing your articles often.
Global communities can translate the announcements to their language and promote the conference locally.

Local communities are formed by members with blogs who publish on different planet sites. You can make a schedule so everyone can publish the announcement every other day. More eyes will see the announcement and will apply either as speaker or visitor.

Two things you want to have is contributors+visitors and sponsors. If your project is famous, then it’s easy. If not, then you better publish the initial announcement to magazines, newspapers, technical blogs-sites. If you don’t have access, then you better send it by e-mail or fax and then call them and ask them if they got the text. If they publish it, you’re lucky.

Translate those announcements and publish them, so local population will see that there’s a conference coming.

2. Promote to other FOSS conferences

There are plenty of FOSS conferences around the world.
* Community (local or global) has to apply for a booth and/or, if it’s possible, present why someone should attend.
* At the booth, you should have promo materials of your conference and give away to local LUGs or hackerspaces to hang posters at their places.
* Another cool thing is to have free coupons for beer at the conference. If beer isn’t the solution, then find another thing that can be found only at your conference and give free coupons.
* Wear special T-Shirts with the logo or #oSC or “Ask me for the conference”. You show people that you’re organizing something and can ask you questions.
* Finally, go to other project’s booth and invite them. You can ask them if they want to have a booth at your conference or apply for a presentation.

3. Messages to post

Create a list of messages you’ll post to social media.
First of all, you should post the announcements.
Then create a list of general messages that you should post before the conference. Content will be related to the subject of the conference or the country etc.
When you have the schedule ready, create a post with the name of the person (mention him/her on the social media), the title of the presentation (mention if it’s a famous project).
The messages can be 2-3 per day but not the same time. Try to have 4-5 hours time delay between tweets.
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Posted in Ambassadors, Documentation, Events, Marketing | Comments Off on How to promote your conference

How to organize-start an open source community

March 26th, 2015 by

This is an attempt to make a list of things that someone-group of people can follow to develop a healthy community or team. This post is an overview of what I did with Kostas for the Greek openSUSE community.
A small detail is that we were only 2. So we took decisions fast. We didn’t have to vote or something.
We had an “advantage” because we have an awesome global community and we asked for something we weren’t sure how to proceed.

Let’s start:

0. Have a clear goal. What you want to do. Have a big goal that some parts aren’t “visible” when you start.
1. Web page: This is the web page-blog that will show information about community, the distro or the project. Make it visible on planets. BE CAREFUL. Don’t focus on how to make a great site-blog using personal wordpress, drupal etc. Set it up on blogger and start post articles. You want CONTENT (write an article every other day). Don’t spend time to maintain or secure your web page.
2. Mailing list: Ask the project if they can setup for you. If not, then try to find alternatives such as google groups.
3. IRC Channel
4. Forum: Prefer to ask from the project to setup a section for your language. If your project doesn’t have forum, then ask a LUG or tech forum to use their’s. Do not have your forum setup in your host for the same reasons as before. Don’t spend time to maintain or secure the forum.
(more…)

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Posted in Ambassadors, Marketing | Comments Off on How to organize-start an open source community

How to organize your trip, your project’s presence to a conference

March 26th, 2015 by

We saw some ideas about how to organize a release party for your project (we like to party!!!). Another part of marketing is to join conferences to promote your project. I write some thought from my experience. Please, if you have any idea you want to share, be my guest.

1. Read the tech news
Read the news (RSS, social networks, mailing lists). There are many conferences that you can join (some conferences are annual). Unfortunately, the organizers might skip to sent you invitation because you’re either too small project without any marketing section or they forgot you for their reasons. You should contact them and ask them to join as community-project. Most conferences have call for papers period, where you can apply for a presentation.

2. Community Meetings
Now that you made the first contact, you should sent an e-mail to your project mailing list, informing them about the conference and asking for an IRC meeting. At the kick off meeting, someone MUST be the coordinator of everything (the tasks are following). Another thing that should be clear is how many members of the community will join. You have to decide early because you can book your trip and accommodation (if the conference is quite big, there won’t be any rooms available for you). Travel as a team. If you decide early, you can ask for sponsorship, like openSUSE Travel_Support_Program or GNOME Travel sponsorship (GNOME for smaller events).

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Posted in Ambassadors, Marketing | Comments Off on How to organize your trip, your project’s presence to a conference

How to organize a release party for a project

March 26th, 2015 by

Part of marketing and organizing a community is the party of the local community to celebrate the new release. From my experience so far, people who join a release party want to have fun. They don’t want to see a presentation of new features of the release etc. We will see the steps to organize a success release party. Please add your opinion, since there are ways to improve.

Procedure:

1. Find a date.
The date of your party should be during a weekend (because it’s easier for people to join, since most people work during the week). Prefer to have your party during the morning. People from outside your city want to join the party and they have to travel to your city and back home. If you discuss with the members of your community about the date, you have to find 2 alternative dates for the party since you have to find the place for the party (see below), so if the owners of the place do not allow you your first date, then use the alternative. A good tool to find common dates is http://www.doodle.com/.

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Posted in Ambassadors, Marketing | Comments Off on How to organize a release party for a project

Craig Gardner’s openSUSE Board campaign

January 8th, 2015 by

Hi openSUSE Team,

It’s campaign season, and time for me to make sure all voters know what I stand for regarding openSUSE, “The Finest Distro, Period.”  As I mentioned in my announcement, if elected to The Board, my intended involvement would focus on these three principle goals:

A) Improving the visibility of openSUSE among the huge variety of distro offerings that exist. Specifically, improving the amount of press and exposure of openSUSE to offset the over-represented exposure that other distros receive.  Since openSUSE is the The Finest Distro, Period (as I asserted above), we can do better to make it known.

B) Promote openQA, and make it the bedrock of quality assurance for openSUSE. Improve the confidence that the community and the public should have in the quality of our great product! The Quality of openSUSE — out of the box, and updated over the wire, over time — is dependent upon a battery of high quality testing. Perception is everything in this business. Great testing will give us great quality, great results, and great users.

C) Support the improvements that have been incrementally made over time by prior board members, building on their successes. There are too many accomplishments to enumerate here, but the project has come a long way under some great leadership. We don’t need huge changes in leadership or direction; we need to capitalize on our prior successes and press forward.

And I wish to add one more goal to my original list:

D) Continue to foster community involvement and attract new talent to the project through high quality openSUSE Conferences. Bringing together the best talent to oSC events does a great deal to build bridges of trust and move the project forward in a unified way. A high quality oSC improves the quality of the brand and the product.

But of course, the few members of the Board are just a small functioning part of a successful community. The real success of openSUSE is a result of the hard work, the passion, and commitment of the members. As a member of the board, I intend to be someone who brings out the best in others; to help you do what you do best; to bring good people together fo the strength of the project. openSUSE is “The Finest Distro, Period,” only because its contributors are The Finest. Period.

As the polls open in a few days, please vote for Craig Gardner (@ganglia). You’ll get a firmly committed member of the board, who wants to help you — the community — to find even greater success.  And don’t forget to have fun.

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Posted in Board, Elections | Comments Off on Craig Gardner’s openSUSE Board campaign

openSUSE in Education, Spreading Continue

May 17th, 2012 by

What do you feel as an open source developer, user, or enthusiast if you see this beautiful piece of software is used by hundred of schools and thousand of students? Great isn’t it? And that’s what happened here in a small dot on this earth in Yogyakarta Indonesia.

This program was initiated by the Government of Indonesia with the objective to introduce the open source and e-learning method to student and teacher. So three years ago I was contacted to help them to realize their dream, and here I’m now reporting that there are around 7300 openSUSE installation in 350 elementary and junior-high schools. We also use SLES in servers to provide repositories and e-learning materials in SCORM using Moodle.  This is work in progress. We educate teachers to use openSUSE and also creating learning material so it is always in beta stage I think 😀

I want to say thank you to all the good people, my friends and co-workers, they are unknown in openSUSE community, even many of them are not subscribing the mailing list, but they are the true openSUSE ambassadors in Indonesia. They come to schools and persuade the teachers to use openSUSE. Without them this dream will never come true. Picture below show some of them smiling holding the openSUSE 12.1 promo DVD that AJ sent to me. You all great! Also picture of teachers while following our session about openSUSE.

All the good people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers train using openSUSE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally we welcome everyone in openSUSE community if you want to visit Indonesia don’t forget to pay a visit to one of this schools in Yogyakarta and you will see how student are happy using it 😀

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Posted in Ambassadors, Education, Marketing | 2 Comments »

Massive update on Ubuntu software…

January 20th, 2011 by

Screenshot using Radiance Light Theme and default Ubuntu indicator layout.

Some brief updates about the ongoing work towards bringing Ayatana Project software into openSUSE:

1. Software Updates

Canonical recently released a batch of updates which bring new functionality (Indicators seem to respond faster now) and very nice improvements, some of them contributed by down-streamers. From my humble experience I would risk to claim that Canonical is doing an excellent job as an upstreamer. I’ve updated all packages to the latest versions. This allowed to remove some patches.

2. Unity

Unity is now one step closer. For Unity I’ve started to package Compiz git snapshots from the correct branches pointed by Unity documentation. This brought something new to me, cmake. I’ve done this very slowly, reading some docs meanwhile about cmake. My packaging around Compiz is mainly based on OBS X11:Compiz repository, so pretty much all the credits should be for the original project Packagers which done an awesome job. Currently I’m missing only 3 packages to test Unity. Recently with kernel and mesa updates some issues around ATI hardware seem to have fixed for openSUSE Factory users, which enabled in my case FireGL, therefore I can test properly Unity now and check for the integration into openSUSE.

Unity by default uses the Ayatana’s Indicators, and if they are not present, it will fallback to GNOME’s applets. This is very nice and I’m thankful Canonical made it this way. This brings non-Ubuntu users the Unity experience at almost no trouble, since there isn’t actually much patching required to implement Unity.

3. GNOME:Ayatana Repository

GNOME:Ayatana Repository will be populated during the next two weeks with the latest changes and will provide for the time being the Ayatana’s Indicators and Unity. I am currently working around libappindicator stack and it’s Indicators. Currently I’m testing the patches required on the GTK+ stack and this is pretty much the last barrier before going into #STAGE2, polishing and populating GNOME:Ayatana.

It’s not decided yet what packages are going to present on Factory. My wish is to push only Unity into Factory and it’s dependencies, this might not happen for 11.4 as I’m not sure about the freeze schedules and it might be too late already, but since we’re depending on Compiz upstream, we’ll see what happens. Even if Unity isn’t going to be available on Factory, I’m sure we can use KIWI or SUSE Studio to release a small openSUSE Unity Spin.

I’ve also decided that I (typo: previously would) wouldn’t like to see Unity available by openSUSE before the official release from Ubuntu, for which I wish all the success.

Since the very early start that I’ve been using pkg-config as much as I can. According to some information that I collected previously, this would be great for cross-distribution build. Depending on the time and work done, I might make the necessary modifications and enable cross-distribution building on this project, thus, making it available for other RPM distributions supported by OBS. This will require a bit of testing before, so it will be work to be done after 11.4 is released and during it’s lifecycle. Maybe by the time of openSUSE 12 gets released, we will have this project also available for other RPM based distributions. I have no knowledge on Debian packaging, but Ubuntu ships this software and Debian probably has it also available so… that won’t be a problem.

4. Artwork

I am providing on GNOME:Ayatana Ubuntu’s Light Themes (Ambiance and Radiance) and offering a patched version of Metacity that renders those themes perfectly. I’m not changing the original colors from the themes or modifying them in any way. So they might be a bit more of orange and not green.

I’ve contacted some people to ask if they would be willing to donate some artwork to make a small package with Wallpapers, some have answered yes, so I will make a small package with a couple of wallpapers for the traditional resolutions and distribute it alongside with this software as optional as always.

5. GTK2, GTK3 and QT

Implementation of GTK3 will be done within the next days, as I am also considering enabling QT support for KDE users (Indicators only for now).

That’s pretty much the result of the last days of work… more news to come in the nearby future.

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Posted in Desktop, GNOME | 1 Comment »

Verein Computerspende Hamburg and openSUSE

December 15th, 2010 by

This article of the German news magazine Der Spiegel made me aware of the Verein Computerspende Hamburg. A German verein is a non profit association, there are lots in Germany for sports, culture and these kind of stuff.

The Verein Computerspende Hamburg does something very useful: It takes used computer parts that other people do not longer need and refurbish them to working computers again. These computers are handed to people who happen to be in a difficult situation in life. They have to live from Hartz IV which is a kind German social security, following the unemployment benefit which ends after a short period. Hartz IV means very, very little money the people have to make their lives from, too little to buy a new computer.

On the other hand, an increasing amount of the job offerings are posted on the web, so people currently unemployed basically have to search the web, not speaking about preparing the resumes to apply for a job. So how would one do that without a computer?

Computing is not only hardware and well known operating systems and applications are far away from free, so it’s obvious that our great project is a perfect partner here: Not that we only offer a user friendly, easy to install, secure, feature rich and last but not least completely free Linux Distribution, we as a community are also able to help if problems come up, regardless if somebody has money or not and what kind of problem it might be. This is another very concrete example where free software and the FOSS communities help your neighbor, or you – as it is very easy to get into a difficult situation in life.

We sent 500 openSUSE 11.3 DVDs to Hamburg with our warm invitation and welcome to all new users to show up and join our community. So be aware of new kids on the block 🙂

And if you are in Hamburg or around and want to help, I am sure Verein Computerspende can make use of the help of more Geekos, such as installation, first hand user support and probably much more. And if you know of a similar interested initiative, let me know, I am sure I will find more DVDs 😉

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Posted in Boosters | 1 Comment »

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