Re: Starting Chicago Gnome User Group

[Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org>]

Hi Kevin,

Kevin Harriss wrote:
> My name is Kevin Harriss and I am new to this list was just wondering
> if anybody was interested in joining/helping out a Gnome User Group
> based in Chicago, Illinois in the United States.  I was looking at the
> list of Gnome User Groups and noticed that there was a lack of US
> based user groups so I decided that I would try to correct this
> problem.

Great! There's also a biggish GNOME presence elsewhere in the mid-west,
in Ohio and Michigan. You might consider widening the scope a little (or
is that too wide of a scope? From where I am, distance between US cities
is measured in centimeters).

> Also, if anybody has any information about starting a Gnome user group
> or information learned during the process of running a user group
> please pass it along.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

There is http://live.gnome.org/UserGroups

At the last GUADEC, someone (Paul Cooper, I think) suggested cheat
sheets for various user-group related activities (organising a stand,
giving a presentation, setting up a user group) - a lot of those are
still unclaimed TODO items.

The short-term stuff to do is:

1. Identify a starting group of 6 or 8 people who will give you some
initial momentum (the GNOME map moght help with this:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide)
2. Create a mailing list, get people signed up, and advertise the list
3. Perhaps create an IRC channel (but I'm not a huge fan of IRC as a
community-building tool, it's more useful once the community is built)
4. Most important: give the group a first meeting - get people to the
same place, identify a conference in the area to represent GNOME at, or
have someone from the user group give a presentation to a local LUG.

Hope this gets you started! Let me know if you need any specific help.

Cheers,
Dave.
-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
bolsh gnome org