i guess i'll start
and
so i'm really that is sort going to actually be reading a lot of that
so this is that so
first i should introduce myself my name is mike ford i'm a you know foundation
member i got involved in you know with the women's outreach program in two thousand
eleven and i and contributing chick you know since then i'm also working on my
master's in computer science in chicago so this talk is basically about a group that
jim campbell who is not documentation contributor
in you know
i started in chicago
and also for so i'd like to explain the title generally when i talk about
free and open source software i call it three the free software can or for
us community are the flask
well i'm calling at the open source community
because in chicago we have a tiny for yourself
and so in order for us
to our reach out be and our small twenty member community we needed to learn
how to engage people who we have things in common but by maybe didn't embrace
all of the all the
the ideals
i that free software this
so
so has a chicago is the third largest city you know
so we have a population of almost people
and we have a pretty large czech by our free software community address that is
really small
so when we were starting out a lot of what the challenge that we face
ways
how do we get people to be interested in free software how do you know
the community around give when most people have never use windex
or have heard of free software
so
we started out
basically looking at our community
and seen what is the larger community that surrounds free software which are and we
found that we have three basic groups of people who were knowledgeable about free software
and to might possibly be interested in learning about you know
and
so are the three basic ribs we have
we have a pretty active python community and we have a hacker space with a
lot of people who tend to run macro last
and we have a nonprofit it's hardware recycling
that installed linux on laptops and dot tops and either don't make seven or sells
them at low cost
so the i community is we have around thousand active members of the pipeline on
that's a sad often times they turn round hole
so they don't use linux
but they have a lot of knowledge that can help them to learn about linux
so that the basically the learning curve for that is not just it would be
for someone coming from microsoft
also they a lot of the people the pipelines maybe ten should use both front
end and back and development and so they have a lot of understand things like
line and concept second hope to become active you know
so
i hope so
also there are people from the python community for involved in the next one of
the all this in
the chicago area in the suburbs is run by a number of the type and
community and then six of our members are actually chicago python community members as well
so we also have a packer space
with around two hundred members that actually probably i think that's the official number and
they probably have actually i five
and we have a they have a lot of a printer which is aegean you
project
people use wonder in state for their projects and also they there are people who
are using free software but maybe not necessarily
there is also a pretty active people were hacking on michael microcontroller projects
and they
the people who go to the hyperspace range from startup see you know is to
hobbyists to just come in and how come we can't
no they mentioned there's also for each card which are is the is i'm not
a you know that recycles computers and one's a installs want to look next
and they also have weekly have nights but they're actually acting on their website which
i think is in java script
so we wanted to create
i community problem you know and there we have to be people in chicago who
work on you know a G able
right here
have the baroness at least and chris webber also decided that would help us
so
this actually lives in a different city so he was just five you often to
help us a but in the two people most organisation trivia J
you probably does most of the he does our website updates and a lot of
our social media posts
so initially we decided that we would have meetings where we would go to the
newcomers tutorial and try to teach people to happen you know and are most of
the meetings i was the only person who actually had a
and i found that
me myself trying to teach twelve people to use G H build up once
different distributions was it with choose difficult i could actually really be productive in the
whole so because of that
we moved trying to have a broader for
for the group
i'm not saying that we encountered a lot first with that P we people
generally when we brought up you know people had a negative reaction
and on a people would say things like you know thank you know unit easily
this they don't care about their user
people didn't like you know three
and thinking chicago for example we have are some people there who is that what
we hit you know we have to switch to access see because we're using old
hardware we can run get a three on it why don't you care about the
people we're donating use machines to
and also because we had a manual focus just on you know people seem to
see as that's kind of
and maybe that's partly my fault on having to just as people were only focus
on you know
we're not really concerned about building a community around free software in general
another issue that we ran into where was a
diversity issues
we
and
so i
so we actually and it out of putting a diversity statement on our website at
a certain point in time and the main reason why we ended up doing that
was because
and well at the women some people did not like the fact that i was
representing the which is
and so i ran into some issues with people being anything that i was in
a position of authority as a woman in the past community and so we did
end up having to diversity statement and we sort of came up with a way
to deal with people on it's actually pretty common in chicago for people to i
for people to feel that
women are not involved in the next because it doesn't interest
and
so
one thing that we've tried to do is have discussions with those people we tried
to engage them and keep them in our community and we have some failures doing
that
and we did have one person laughter
but it's
we tried to be as inclusive as parts
and
so in general what we feel is if someone doesn't agree with that adversity balls
that's totally fine
and we welcome that person to be community anyway
just that people don't for us for having the balls
so
the basic way that we deal with that issue in
we've tried to engage the larger linux community and we found other people were sort
of in senior positions in the linux community more willing to speak up and support
of diversity and that's kind of changed data to a lot of
a lot of the people involved in our group
and we try to give people a reasonable chance to talk about how they feel
about first i think ye
you know not everyone has the same how political ideas like
so i tried to
try to engage people and give them a chance to talk about what they feel
is important that we do and conversations what we're so productive
and
i do emphasise in this
so we do things like try to use just for like which some people like
that that's important talk
and we do have maybe writes to i have expressed about this
click there are but
so
the one that we ended up with is we have at our meetings one someone
the first two hours we have a harness and we invite members of the community
this sometimes people will approach us
ask you talked some topics
that is that we all the topics are related to free software and since gemini
our we don't community members we tend to talk about things that are happening you
know so when we go to know that will usually
give people gonna talk about it so that people kind of feel like they're involved
you know what's go what's going on
so we want people to feel like
we are part of the fast but at the same time they can be in
the gonna buy belong to our organisation and then we spend the remaining three hours
of our meeting sorry one
the remaining three hours we have
and
generally we invite people to bring whatever project they're working on
so some people drink it all related projects
okay
no some people drink they don't they do projects and some people just bring whatever
they are working on at the time
we hold our meetings at the local hacker space
at this point we're affiliated with chicago
so we have a share need a page we have a lapel once in the
chicago area where the only linux related in the city
we have a social media presents that we actively poster twitter little plus
i tended to see a we actually
and we have a website that we maintain a mailing list
there's you channel and then the me to start
so what we provide for members
we try to provide an informal space for people to talk about three
software related topics
and we try to provide people with some tech support so we have people who
use linux or we try to install it if they aren't you know we try
to help them or how
and we have an o'reilly book just now so people can purchase textbooks you know
and also they do reviews they can get
chequebooks for free and then we specifically try to help with again so help you
work problem G H bill
learn out right
so some of the talks that we had we had an intro to you max
talk to chris webber gave and we went that michael there about came and talked
with about our system D
do you confident she studies open show showed and then i do what
is that we had in brussels
and we have a lot of times
but in general maybe half or two thirds of them are gonna like it
some of the project that people have worked on and we have one guy respond
working on the G object bindings go programming language i didn't work on documentation and
we had someone who are actually does that models
i don't know does a lot of our video he recording for a free and
open source work for inferences and so he was working on the system so we
can streamline video and then i worked on documents we've had someone working on you
know music and i'm working on some more right point had from that
another percent working on this decay bindings
we've also had thank you some of our members become involved in we are just
about a two are actually participating in P W
we see more people who are interested in you know open to the idea of
using you know we don't get people generally have kind of move past
a pass
a huge you know and they
we see a lot of people who actually
actually what are the things that it really big difference was the introduction of fast
and as much as i hate to say that was something that people would completely
given up i'm going on using you know it was something that need them feel
that
so it actually have made a pretty big difference in terms of perception our community
east i don't some of our members also become friends
the community of people who we have all we actually have a lot of systems
administrators
cool come to our because which i was actually kind of surprised about actually didn't
realise that a lot of sysadmins use linux on the desktop for
and so what i was trying to teach people to cool for development in what
they're like an extra
i thought it was because i was a student make been using linux problem turn
turned out that actually a lot of them were not about
so i was surprised but i suppose
like to
we do have a lot of hype on community members
we have students from local universities to come and the hackers
so what we found is as we've kind of moved
having a slightly broader for this
that people are able to sort of contextualized you know basically it last as a
project
that is working they don't see as are working in isolation and making decisions
just based on what we want to do they see us as people who are
contributing to the larger
as well
also we found that people who may know something about free software for example allows
users
but i don't really know much about you know more about linux desktop
are able to express interest from to our meetings and learn some things without feeling
like i have to be axed
so in the past we plan doing meetings monthly since september and to be as
i said we started out with four members we have about fifteen people who are
actively engaged in organising is
and then we have various other people from not sure how many met members of
all
it's probably right
and we've also found that the community feedback that we've gotten have become a lot
pots
so that's all i feel is even though in some ways i feel like we're
not really have much to you know directly we are making a difference in the
king in our in terms of how is see so
so our plans for the coming year are owns some of our members want to
start doing some packing only events
we're going to do you to work that how we should and building the community
and encouraging and supporting interesting often channel
so
you said i should talk to about starting
so
so i would say that you last i think a free open source software is
not as popular as it is in here
so you may be starting from scratch that we that we were or you may
have a all the next user group in your area you can get involved in
any sort of
actively talk about it will work
of course you know
so out there is a on linux user group then i would recommend that you
probably try to start with a broader focus if you have a really small
like we have website it you can go and set up pretty easily probably take
about twenty minutes to start it up
we use our mailing list a lot for a communicating with numbers for starting dates
of our meetings for asking members to get a
and the other thing is that you should convince your friends
well just
starting out especially we found that we had to give talks a lot
and it was pretty hard at first to get people in the in the group
to present
and so you
i would be willing to step up to back whenever there's an these five
and just share your knowledge and trying to form so that people are become you
know comfortable contributing what thing
so the other thing that we think
is that we see free software as something that people can use
to enhance their
if they can on learn they can use it so vertical they can read the
source code you can modify it on they can provide they can distract through using
and developing free software
well one thing that we do it's not is that oftentimes people why and write
your software
at work
first social media et cetera and so
we try to not be basic we try not to be judgement
we try to encourage people and keep it
and
that's our so
you are the links
and i give i talk really that's why
we have any spend
i but most what we use for which use should we have the existing more
so actually but what happened was that there had analogue in the chicago area that
had become that had that was no longer act
that started that i at which is that
school area and then it not and at the for a number of years and
so we started out just doing they can you know
and as we kind of found that was working as well we sort of resurrected
a lot and so we did end up having some people who had part of
a lot of what which was where i hope
but we did and that fill sort of resurrecting like the philly sound that in
building
so this point you to or we just to
we should what was no i would say i mean someone is i that hesitant
about giving this talk to the you know
because we started out really need don't focus and that was kind of my interesting
being involved but in the and what we what we are doing is we're doing
two hours of talks about three hours of have
and the hacking events
we have people work on you know and during the talks we do a lot
of you know related talks and it's know that the people organising are gonna
so i would say that in some ways
we are exactly part of the you know
we've sort of we've sort of had to broaden our for us because we have
such a small
well it's a will which will almost
so we use
you could use G really male
but
so what advice would you give to people were you know sort of you know
from your experience
starting out new groups and then you give a little bit of space already but
which you
would use you were to do it all over again which you start with how
to focus on them
i think
for me the focus it'll kind of the reason why got involved
and that's and something that spend really important to me and that i
try to
keep going
and so i don't
i don't think i will
lose the focus on you know i think that is something that i feel is
an important
where
but i do you think that
i mean it it's hard to get people involved in software
it's kind of at a help that a lot of ways we
and so
we sort of try to do whatever works
is all
making people interested and excited about
just the gina project and just saw for in general
so as a result of that i think you know i mean you know
if you look at
all of the projects that are
okay
you know and
these are
and do you buy these are things that people outside i can do you
and so explaining how we fit into the larger
free open source community has that really interesting thing i have sort of helps people
to sort of
what
just sort of what you know in a certain place and there
as a group that isn't just isolated
elements
making decisions kind of without listening to you
but so are a group that's providing
second used by
thank you for your told to i everything that you to say that there's been
some pictures used some possibilities for know quality about two works generally able to see
how do you do you do face a to discreetly seasonal and how would you
try to do these group of course try to do that to change the point
of view a the altar for you
so i think i think things that we did were first it's a
a three stopper in general are the other thing that we try to do is
to help people or how to use get a three and to talk about you
know three and what's happening in the ghetto project and what people are working on
and how the vision of the ball and sort of present what we want to
have happen in the future and you know how to get project use itself
and i think in a way that's sort of where we've seen a change
and how to is when people start to see that this is something that
we all people are working on
and that this is something that we are actively contributing to because we have a
passion for free software
a passion for development and then we seen people's attitude share and become more open
minded about saying well you know they'll tell us
this doesn't work for me but they don't see that as being something that will
not for me
it's you know something that
someone is form
i'm not you know maybe three months in the future will be different and there
will be improve
any other
thank you