some thoughts

[Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>]

(DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A LONG MAIL)


So I kept thinking about how we can get new members into this project.
And after reading Nadims mail and the big effort that was putten into
getting new members I kept thinking about which would be the best way to
attain these goals.
And which mistakes we've done cz first of all and the end of it all are
WE...
I think we (me too) are making a big mistake when we contact
universities.
Normal way of thinking would be get some students introduce them to
Linux they get excited and they will work on it.

BUT the reality is a little bit different.

ppl who come to Arabeyes are ppl who know about linux and are already
interested in it.
So it would be smart to get these ppl first. The point would about
forgetting (At first) the potential users and fish the users with
potential...
 Linus released his code in the net and avangardistic ppl came
downloaded it got used to it and then worked on it, our situation is not
really different we are a very avangardistic group (this has it's pros
and cons) so this means that normally it is very normal that we have to
wait for ppl to work with us!!! So to go to normal students means to
create potential and at this stadium this is too early. Especially in
the Arabic world.
this leads me to the question: are there ppl who know about linux? And
if yes where can we find them?!
This would be our REAL targetbase. This is totally different from the
traditional approach go to university make some pub and wait for the
developers... I myself also believed in this...

FIRST and very naivily: LUGs, who are these ppl in the LUGs? Linux
interested users, power users, so it's obvious that we target the LUGs.
The q would be now which kind of publicity do we have to make to terget
these LUGs?

SECOND and this is interesting as we totally forgot about it: the Linux
vendors in the Arabic world!!! These ppl are REALLY interested in
getting Linux into the Arabic world. The technical stuff working at the
Vendors offices, or the ppl visiting their sites would be out target.
Redhat or SuSe helped Xfree and gnome when both companies were very
little offices, the Q is not how much can they help us but why don't we
ask them to help?

THIRD the computer students And now comes a very interesting point: WE
(me included as always) thought going to a student means going to a
university means go to the professor which is FOR SURE better then a
student as he is the prof BUT this is totally wrong even here in europe,
as profs represent a system they don't represent free students with free
minds. I want to ask YOU what would be successful? going to a bunch of
computer students at a technical center, meet with them and ONLY with
them in a cafe and talk with them about Linus loving California and tux
being so fat or speaking with the prof who has no interest for you
anyway in a formal manner with formal mails, the makers of this site
were not profs anyway and we don't have any prof who showed lately, at
least I didn't read a mail from a prof.
Contacting these students can either be direct or in sending mails to
their mailing lists.Or any other way which is appropriate AND so the
next Q would what is the appropriate way?

These are preliminary idea to evaluate the situation, to see it from a
different angle.

WE have to search for the user who KNOWS LINUX not make the user know
it, this costs too much effort and history showed us only ppl who
developed from theirselves interest in Linux came to work on Linux.

So the first step would be to forget making Linux known and fish the
users who have potential but who need to know us, I knew Arabeyes
through gnome, when I wanted to work on gnome the gnome ppl pointed me
to Arabeyes, WHY OH WHY didn't I knew before about Arabeyes, I kept
asking myself... The answer is obvious where is arabeyes outside
arabeyes?
in Slashdot so many articles came about the iraqi LUG about Saudi
arabian geeks, WHERE IS ARABEYES? There are many technical mags out
there in the Arabic world WHERE IS ARABEYES? maybe too time consuming,
so where is Arabeyes in linux4arabs? Any announcement lately about Bicon
in it? Or about gnome 2.2 fully arabized? Or Arabeyes having a new
webiste?etc...

Where is Arabeyes to reach every potential user who wants to work with
arabic glyphs under Linux from Indonesia to Morocco?

I think this is very important to first SEE the problem some answers to
the qs are obvious: how to reach LUGs, how to make Arabeyes known etc...
(banners...) BUT there is for sure more then this, this gets me to the
second big important point : Communication, I don't have a big clue
about Arabic youth mentality excuse me for this shabab.
But to reach ppl you need an appropriate way of communication, do they
like LAN parties ?! Do they have the means to do so? Or do they only
like cafes? do young ppl still like cafes?  Well from what I'm seeing it
seems they do.etc, etc... a simple banner wont make it, do you really
think writing a paper on your car in a street filled with half-eyed ppl
and thousand of cars will make them buy yours?

Well these are two main thoughts we have to exploit. PLEASE reply PLEASE
even if you don't want to reply THINK....
And write something down it's not about me it's not about you it's about
the imam in the mosque and the lady in the Bank ;) (I love this one, a
little bit outdated but ok...)

yours
Arafat


yours
Arafat