Safe as Milk

Idea of the day

Wouldn’t it be cool for GNOME to have partnerships with bookshare.org and Project Gutenberg? How about integrating evince to provide books for download?

LinkedIn group topping out

The GNOME LinkedIn group has finally calmed down – over the last 2 days I have had 12 requests to join (just approved) to bring the total number of members to 277 members, just a week after announcing it! I expect to top out around 300 members next week.

And we’re an international bunch! A quick sample showed: 53 from the USA,  24 from the UK, 17 people from India, 13 from France, 13 from Spain, 10 from Italy, 9 from Brazil, 4 from Chile, 4 from China, but only 3 from Germany! And half the members come from outside those countries (for those whose countries aren’t mentioned, if you *really* want to know, say so in comments, I’ll tell you).

It would be interesting to cross reference this group of GNOME fans with others we have – the GNOME map, the Facebook group, and even GNOME Foundation members

Not to mention the SVN committers list…

Primevère presentation

Putting this on my blog for posterity. This is the presentation I gave at Primevère with a bonus final slide containing links to stuff which we referenced during the Q&A session at the end of the presentation.

Primevère

Over the weekend, the Primevère salon was on in the Eurexpo conference center in Lyon. Thisis something of a regional mecca for everyone interested in organic living, holistic lifestyles, energy conservation, and everything to do with the environment. Over three days, more than 30,000 people come to see what’s on offer, educate themselves and mingle in this very particular ambiance.

There are a really wide range of associations, products and services on display – from the giant Kapla constructions above to Esperanto courses, Hemp beer, clothes and ropes, organically grown produce and solar panels.

In the middle of it all, my local LUG, ALDIL, had one of the most popular stands ofthe salon, spreading the gospel of Free Software with our ragtag group of volunteers. Over the three days, there were lots of presentations, including: “Which software for which usage?” (by yous truly) “Free software office applications”, “Communicating with Free Software” and “Free games”.

This is one of the reasons I love this LUG – this is not the kind of event that you associate with Linux geeks, but it is exactly the kind of event where you find *lots* of people willing to listen, and sensitive to our arguments of freedom and community. This is the ALDIL’s third participation in the event, but the first time I’ve been able to go myself, and it’s been an eye-opening experience. It’s exactly the kind of public which all free software projects should be aiming to reach with their message.

links for 2008-03-02

• StratoS Online
  Eric did a great job co-ordinating the “stone soup” that is a GNOME stand at FOSDEM – here’s a detailed report he made of the weekend afterwards.
  (tags: fosdem gnome outreach)