Activities in KSA

[Jan Wildeboer]

All,

I am right now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in my role Red Hats Evangelist. It 
seems there is virtually no Fedora community here.

Am I missing something or do we need to change that? There definitely is a 
lot of interest and some enthusiasm to build upon.  Simple stuff like better 
localization, more comples stuff like having usergroups.

So do we know of any work in the MEA area? Should we start focusing a bit 
more on this area?

Jan

[Gerold]

Hi Jan,

I totally agree with you, but ...
1.) there were some barriers (legal and embargos) from E to MEA,
2.) the first step must be from the MEA region as well

or should be bring something into the dust? because of not knowing
infrastructure fo a county, people who needs AND want our help is very
difficult.
maybe a "You're interested in ..." - page could help to find the correct
"first contact".

All the best

Gerold
> All,
>
> I am right now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in my role Red Hats Evangelist. It
> seems there is virtually no Fedora community here.
>
> Am I missing something or do we need to change that? There definitely is a
> lot of interest and some enthusiasm to build upon.  Simple stuff like
> better
> localization, more comples stuff like having usergroups.
>
> So do we know of any work in the MEA area? Should we start focusing a bit
> more on this area?
> Jan
>
> marketing mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing

[Tareq Al Jurf]

Hi Jan
Welcome to Riyadh :)

About the Fedora community,
I know only one contributer in Riyadh, but there are some users.
During the past few months I've been introducing Fedora to a lot of my
friends.

If you're wondering about the reason of the number of users who use Fedora
here, that's because of the availability of pirated products. Which won't
make an economical problem for people.
That problem is in most Asian countries, except some like Hong Kong, Japan
...etc.
So most people here know nothing about Open Source things, so I'm trying to
spread the Open Source understanding, and Fedora here.

If you need any help with Riyadh, feel free to contact me :)

Regards

On 6 April 2010 10:45, Jan Wildeboer  wrote:
> All,
>
> I am right now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in my role Red Hats Evangelist. It
> seems there is virtually no Fedora community here.
>
> Am I missing something or do we need to change that? There definitely is a
> lot of interest and some enthusiasm to build upon.  Simple stuff like
> better
> localization, more comples stuff like having usergroups.
>
> So do we know of any work in the MEA area? Should we start focusing a bit
> more on this area?
> Jan
>
> marketing mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing

[Diaa Radwan]

Hello Jan,

I am happy that you will be focusing on the ME area. I am fedora
ambassador located in Egypt I have conducted 6 fedora events during
2008 [1] and 2009.  There's no legal issues dealing with
fedora/redhat. the only thing that might take time is sending fedora
swag as there is tariff and CD/DVD inspection (odd).

The FOSS community is active in terms of creating events; when we have
some place to host us. Unfortunately fedora doesn't capitalize huge
user base, so people tend to distribute customizations of ubuntu
instead of fedora.  [2][3].

I wish if we can organize a fedora event for masses; it would be great
as universities has a limited number of visitors. especially if the
event was linked with JBoss, it would attract more audience.

[1] http://fossology.net/taxonomy/term/6 , I didn't report 2009
events; I will do it soon ;).
[2] http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/open-source-computing-masses
[3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/maggieosama/sets/72157623638114083/

--
Diaa Radwan, RHCDS

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 9:45 AM, Jan Wildeboer  wrote:
> All,
>
> I am right now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in my role Red Hats Evangelist. It
> seems there is virtually no Fedora community here.
>
> Am I missing something or do we need to change that? There definitely is a
> lot of interest and some enthusiasm to build upon.  Simple stuff like better
> localization, more comples stuff like having usergroups.
>
> So do we know of any work in the MEA area? Should we start focusing a bit
> more on this area?
> Jan
>
> marketing mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing