Re: some thoughts

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de> wrote:
>
[snip snip]
>
> 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...

I think the two go hand-in-hand.  In order for this community to grow
and flourish, we continue to need new blood and the most fertile land
to find those people are the universities - as people are seeking to
expand their horizons and learn a thing or two.

What I had seen is that the majority of seasoned linux users that
really know what linux is all about are in business trying to make
a few euros here and there off of it and don't seem to really want
to commit to helping out - to them, it seems, it is a grab-n-run
attitude although they will say otherwise, but actions speak much
much louder than words...  A very short sighted view, I think we
all agree, but that is reality.  I also think the idea of volunteering
for ANYTHING for Arabs is a very foreign concept, even though it should
NOT be and it actually is ingrained into people's heads that we must
and should help anywhere we can - not to mention that it is our duty
to seek and attain knowledge, etc.  People would rather sit on their
hands instead of "give anything away" - I'm not sure this attitude
will change soon, but we can at a minimum raise people's awareness.
I also think people question their attitudes when they see a group
like us and they go (with mouth open), "you guys do all that for
FREE ? Why ?" and so when you tell them, it is wonderful, in most
instances, to see them relate; the next thing they say "oh, but I
don't have time" :-)  And the cycle continues.

>  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.

I disagree.  Most Arabs, till this day, believe there is NO alternative
to microsoft.  When we called Aljazeera on one of their programs to
tell 'em otherwise, people were astonished and unconvinced.  What this
tells me is the need for an educational and an awareness campaign.  We
had hoped that Arabbix would make lots of inroads in that regard, but
its development has stalled of late and we'll try to correct that
(a polished solution makes much more of an impression).  Once we have
something we really can promote, we'll need to contact some magazines
to have the CD included for free.

> 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?

I agree, we most definitely need to get LUGs more involved in what we
are doing.  Unfortunately, the LUGs out there don't even talk to each
other.  I've repeatedly have been asking for a single LUG site that
would simply pull news from all the other LUGs (to bring all closer
together and to foster a sense of competition and accomplishment) to
no avail.  I remember that the idea was well received in Gitex in Dubai,
but nothing has happened.  We need someone to champion this idea which
will entail,

 + Obtaining a reasonable Domain name
 + Creating a UTF-8 website (CMS - phpnuke or postnuke or drupal or ...)
 + Contacting various LUGs to get them to RSS their news so the new
   "Super LUG container" can pull
 + Do some minimal admin'ing

If you think about it we could have a single site who's mandate is to
propagate and propel the Open Source mantra in the Arab world that has
this Super.LUG idea be a link on its pages, etc.  Again, this very much
falls into the camp of awareness and education.  But do we have anyone
that is willing to do all (or any) of this ??

> 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?

Agreed, try to collect a list of vendors/sellers so we can potentially
contact 'em.

> 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?

Again, agreed (except for your constant reference to Linus :-) and we
tried to do that, but that is a much harder thing to do.  I think in
Jordan (Isam correct me if I'm wrong), they had a few "Linux Days" on
campus where a desk was setup with pamphlets and CDs given out.  From
what I heard, it was successful, but did it continue and were people
actually given the proper info for them to solidify their experiences,
etc ?  Was there a building-up on that foundation ?

> 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?

I think we should do both - try to educate the general masses (anyway
we can) and target those experienced with linux.  As for why you didn't
hear about Arabeyes before gnome, I'm not sure -- did you ever search
"Arabic Linux" on google ? :-)

Another things in passing, there were some people from .lb that showed
up to IRC awhile back that seemed very experienced with Linux and I
tried as hard as I could (and you know how pushy I can be :-) to get
them involved, but they simple brushed us off - why ?  Well, I think
they deemed our work non-crucial (as one of 'em noted, "I hardly ever
need to use Arabic on my computer").  Tell them that there are users
there in need of this and that you can help thousands/millions of
people didn't sway him.  So how do you convince these people ?

> 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...

I agree 100%, but again we need a group of people to do this full-time.
The Iraqi LUG was/is on a campaign to raise awareness (and anything that
has Iraq in it is immediately moved to the "news" column), but I for one
can't have a million things to do and be the sole voice that writes
articles, contacts people, plans, encourages, etc, etc.  Arabeyes needs
help and without volunteers to point out issues and present solutions
and actually enact 'em, we won't move forward unless we start cutting
corners all over the place.  So instead of me looking into 2-3 projects
I could dump 'em and concentrate on Public Relations (PR), but that to
me is too costly.  I would have loved it if we had a group of say 3-4
people that are not technically inclined (ie. who weren't interested
in programming or translating) that would concentrate on such efforts.
We don't have a single person, let alone 3 or 4.

Again, anyone looking to really help here ?  I can help as much as I
can, but again I can't take on everything there is to do.

> 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?

So what do you suggest ?  The banner idea was suggested and I asked for
help in creating new ones, did anyone step foreword to help ?  No...

I really don't know what to say - we are all capable, but the active
people are simply overworked and we need a new legion of non-techies
(artists, website designers, article writers, etc) to step in and help.

Arafat, thank you for your continued thoughts (keep 'em coming), but
do please always address the "how can this be done ?" and "who will do
this ?" parts to your ideas - they are crucial.

Salam.

 - Nadim


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