[Fedora-ambassadors-list] Right on Brother, Right on.

Pat McKelvey pmckelvey at zoomtown.com
Sat Mar 18 21:23:09 UTC 2006


David:

I just saw your comments about ambassadorship in the newsletter.  I 
agree completely.  I have said so at the last ambassador's meeting on 
the 16 and was loudly ignored.  There may be too many competing agendas 
in this situation.

I see being an ambassador as being the personal face on Linux (fedora or 
other).  I do not feel like I want to be the unpaid sales staff of any 
of the various companies that have paid staff.  Let the paid staff go to 
the Big Conferences and Man or Woman the Booths.  That kind of thing 
gets old quick.  I'll work, one on one, with the local users group.  I'm 
trying to find a way to smuggle Linux into the Cincinnati School System, 
which is all Windows now.  I'm working on the Cincinnati Computer Coop 
which rebuilds computers for schools and non-profit organizations.  I 
may end up creating a intro to Linux course for them.  I have made up 
the contents of three college courses, at the same time as teaching 
them. Doing one course should be easy, just so long as it doesn't get 
into the  policy part of SELinux.

I agree with your voice of sanity.  Your ideas are sound and let's see 
if we can't stir up some more support for the one-on-one approach. I 
won't "dis", as my daughter says, anyone using another distro.

Being a licensed Professional Engineer, having personally designed and 
made an integrated circuit as my senior EE project, having taught 
College for 3 years, been on the ANSI 70B committee (National Electrical 
Code - Maintenance) for 2 years, being a Lapsed MCNE, and having 2 pages 
of computer courses on my resume, I can give expert testimony in a Court 
downtown, but I can't get heard over the noise about "getting schwag".

I want to get back to helping people learn about Linux and all the neat 
things that can be done on it.  How much opportunity this open operating 
system offers, someone who is curious, the chance to learn and grow.  I 
believe that the world needs more people who want to tinker and learn. 
I want to be in on that excitement and growing.  I want to pass along 
what I have learned in 20 years in computers to those who are interested.

As I believe I said at the Ambassador's meeting, my drawer is full 
enough of T-shirts.  Perhaps being of Irish extraction, my temper gets 
the better of me. I probably need to go and have a last green beer left 
over from St. Patrick's Day (I'm Buddhist).

Pat

-- 

Fedora Ambassador to the Midwest USA
Patrick C. McKelvey PE
(License E-45489 expires 12/31/2006)
3315 Ashwood Dr.
Cincinnati, OH 45213
pmckelvey at fedoraproject.org
pmckelvey at zoomtown.com
GnuPG - DSA - 9b7e48b3 at pgp.mit.edu




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