[wplug-board] Presentation ideas for a July GUM

[Pat Barron]

I think we've mostly discussed these - either among the board as a 
whole, or among various subsets of us in IRC and such.  I just wanted to 
make sure they're all gathered in one place to make it easier to keep 
track of them.

These are potential presentations I could do myself, or could otherwise 
participate in:

  * Overview of Git, or possibly a general into to distributed version
    control systems.  I know that Joe is interested in this too, and if
    we were to do this we should definitely reach out to Charles Butler
    to ask him if he'd participate (as he's also expressed an interest
    in doing such a presentation).
  * Hacking up Firefox add-ons (this may not be a "full" presentation,
    so could potentially be done in conjunction with another short
    "how-to" presentation).
  * Introduction to OpenAFS - admittedly this is sort of a niche, but
    could be interesting because (among other reasons) AFS itself is
    strongly rooted in Pittsburgh (it was created at CMU), and at least
    two members of the OpenAFS "Council of Elders" are still in Pittsburgh.

Other presentation ideas that have been previously floated (from the 
board meeting minutes):

  * Intro to Drupal, and/or possibly a general intro to CMS.
  * Presentation about Monkey (not to be confused with monkeybot...)
  * Related to Stanley's idea about reaching out to teach people about
    Linux, perhaps a general introductory presentation about Linux. 
    This isn't a good fit for our "traditional" audience, so perhaps it
    could be done as an out-of-cycle event, specifically seeking out an
    audience that hasn't had any exposure to Linux. I actually have a
    canned intro presentation that I've delivered twice - once for the
    CPUser Group out in Tarentum, and once for PACC.  This is probably
    something we should make a point to keep updated and ready to
    present on a moment's notice.

Also, one other thought, while I have it in mind...

  * Also related to outreach, we should also give some thought again to
    whether we want to do something specifically for Software Freedom
    Day this year.  This is also something I don't think fits into the
    normal GUM cycle, at least not the way I envision it - my thought is
    that it would be more about education and evangelism than any kind
    of formal presentation. My idea here is not to get the public to
    come to us - but rather, we go to the public...  I've had this idea
    the last couple of years (that unfortunately we never really had a
    chance to pursue) of maybe approaching one of the larger shopping
    malls in the area and try to convince them to let us use a vacant
    kiosk for the day, bring some informational handouts, some CDs, and
    maybe a couple of laptops for demos.  I know Terry was disappointed
    in our lack of a plan for Software Freedom Day the last couple of
    years, he might be interested in getting something like this going.

Any other ideas we should make sure to consider?

--Pat.
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