Allegheny Class 3 (IRC day 1): The Aftermath

[Mel Chua]

Darren + Matt - possibly a bit wordy, but all the info I wanted to 
convey is in there... feel free to cleanup/rearrange/annotate/send to 
the class. Cc'ing the Design and Marketing lists so folks can see what's 
going on.

Allegheny students, if you're reading this, anything your professors say 
or send to the list supersedes anything you read or see on these lists - 
this is a draft I'm sending out to keep Fedora community members in the 
loop.

---

The third "Allegheny Meets Fedora" class just finished (Fedora people, 
see http://blog.melchua.com/2010/04/06/fedora-hat-fleisige-helfer/ for 
more context). Thanks to ke4qqq, rbergeron, sdziallas, and mizmo (David 
Nalley, Robyn Bergeron, Sebastian Dziallas, and Mo Duffy) for helping us 
out today!

The remainder of this email is written for the class. There's a link to 
the IRC log from today somewhere in there.

A few notes:

0. You all did an *extremely* good job today - we're throwing you into 
the deep end of something that's moving fast, and you're doing a great 
job of asking questions and keeping up. Remember our mantra: 
Productively Lost. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is ask questions 
and tell us exactly why you're confused - it helps us fix things better 
for the next people who come around.

A good target before our next class on Thursday morning might be to have 
your team write an introduction email explaining your project, 
introducing yourselves, describing your current plans, and asking any 
questions you might currently have to the mailing list of the team 
you're working with (there is a link to the mailing list subscription 
page at the bottom of this email). You don't have to do this - it's just 
a suggestion - but it's what I'll suggest to any team that asks me 
"we're not sure what to do, what should we do?" between now and Thursday.

1. My email is mchua AT fedoraproject DOT org if you need *anything.* 
You can always start by emailing me; if we need to move to another list 
or an IRC channel or something, I'll let you know.

2. I am on campus between Wednesday morning and Friday night, and I 
would like to spend as much time as possible in those 3 days working 
with teams on their projects. Just email me and let me know a time and 
place (I'm unfamiliar with campus, so will need directions) to come out 
and work with you/your team. Note that I have a flexible schedule all 
day, and that my usual bedtime is somewhere between 1am-4am. So if I'm 
awake, I will come out to campus. If I'm asleep, I won't reply until I 
wake up. ;)

3. Information about the class is at 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Allegheny_Activism:_Team_Assignments, and 
each of your teams has an information page on 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Allegheny_Activism:_Team_Assignments with 
some resources that members of the Fedora community have tried to pull 
together to help you get started.

4. I've heard that some people would like alternate images burned - for 
instance, it may help the Sugar on a Stick webpage folks to have one of 
those sticks to play with, and the Design Suite people may want a Design 
Suite liveCD... if you'd like one of these things (Darren and Matt 
included), please email me and let me know and we'll figure out a way to 
take care of it. We have CDs available for those who want CDs, but 
you're going to have to bring your own (2GB+) stick to burn (make sure 
it's got nothing on it that you want to keep - but you can always wipe 
it and reuse it afterwards).

5. A log of today's chat is available at 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Allegheny_Activism:_2010-04-06_log.

6. Some of you may have been asked to join other mailing lists and 
channels by the Fedora folks you were talking to today. This is a good 
idea. The lists you may have been invited to join are likely:

* https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team (design)
* https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing (marketing)
* https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/websites (websites)

And the channels may be:

* #allegheny
* #fedora-design
* #fedora-mktg
* #fedora-websites

The last two channels require a special sort of registration with IRC; 
if you need to get into one of those channels and need help figuring out 
how to register, email me.

Thanks again

--Mel

PS: ADDENDUM! You folks have just made the lives of future contributors 
easier - after class there was a bit of discussion on IRC about people 
not being able to get into the #fedora-mktg channel to help out because 
of registration issues. Bob Jensen saw this, popped in and changed the 
settings... and you should be able to just join that channel now. 
Thanks, Bob! (And thanks to the class for pointing this out to us!)