[wplug-board] Are installfests obsolete?

[Pat Barron]

My previous note gets me thinking (again) about something I've been 
wondering about for a while....

Is the entire concept of an "installfest" obsolete at this point? I'm 
thinking about the last few installfests that WPLUG has done (excluding 
the event at HackPittsburgh, since they had "pent-up demand" and they 
invited us to come - and all the installs we did there were for 
HackPittsburgh members).  Since, I guess, last fall, at the installfests 
we've done, I can only recall us doing one actual install - and that was 
for a board member.  ;-)

I can think of two different kinds of events called "installfests" that 
groups do.  One would be an "advocacy/outreach" type of installfest, 
which I think is the kind of event we usually try to do.  This type of 
event targets people who are curious about Linux, but aren't sure where 
to start.  This is type of installfest that I believe is generally 
obsolete - I can't recall the last time anyone walked into one of our 
events and said "I'd like to try Linux and/or free software, but I'm not 
sure how to set it up - can you help me?"  I think folks like this 
generally have a much better footing in the world these days - in the 
(somewhat distant) past, installing any Linux distro could be tricky, 
there could be hardware dependencies that were out there like land mines 
waiting to trip up the unsuspecting, etc.  Now, I think installation has 
gotten straightforward enough for most of the mainstream distros that 
people who want to install are much more able and willing to go ahead 
and do it on their own without needing any specialist help. We also now 
live in a world where it's *much* easier to do installs within a 
"container" (VirtualBox, etc.), and people don't need to be as worried 
about dual-booting with Windows (so again, not as much specialist help 
needed to get started with Linux).  This is just my perception, I could 
be wrong - I do note, however, that aside from the one individual who 
showed up at the last installfest who was referred by the Mac Users 
Group (and who was only there to ask a few questions), I don't recall 
anyone showing up at any of the recent installfests who wasn't actually 
a Linux user already.  Granted, this could also be in part because we're 
not doing a good job of promoting our events outside of our own 
community (so almost everyone who even knows about the event is already 
a Linux user, or at least somewhat Linux-knowledgable).

Another type of installfest that I've seen groups do is of the "release 
party" type - which tends to be more of a social event than anything 
else.  These events are more like, "The latest release of Ubuntu, code 
named 'Crazy Cantaloupe' [just to pick a typical name out of thin air... 
;-) )], is being released this week, and all of us Ubuntu users are 
going to get together and all upgrade, together."  I'm not aware of us 
actually doing events like this (and our community is sufficiently 
disto-fragmented that a distro-specific release party might not be 
productive enough), but what I have seen is that our installfests do 
seem to function more as social events for the existing WPLUG community 
than anything else.  So I wonder if we should think about holding 
installfest-like events such as this, that are more for a social than an 
advocacy/outreach purpose.  Though even if we did, maybe move them 
around from our normal meeting location (and hold them in places like a 
Carnegie Library branch, the way we did with our last installfest), just 
for the sake of variety, and the chance to catch passers by who may very 
well already be aware of Linux, but aren't aware of WPLUG.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm really going with this - other than to 
ask people to think about it.  Based on our recent installfest history, 
I'm just wondering if holding installfests (as we have been doing them 
to this point) is even a good use of our time and resources, and/or if 
maybe we should think about restructuring our installfest-like events to 
be able to be more useful and enjoyable to more people.  Or maybe if, in 
place of installfests, we should do more purely advocacy/outreach type 
events, where we don't necessarily expect people to get themselves 
installed right then and there, but we can send them home with media, 
information, and maybe a little bit of curiosity to find out more about 
Linux, FOSS, and WPLUG in general.  In other words, give them a little 
taste of what they're missing out on, and make them want more.  ;-)

--Pat.