What is nmarques doing?

[Nelson Marques]

On Wed, 2010-03-24 at 15:10 -0400, Mel Chua wrote:
> > I want leave this lines explaining a bit of what I am doing. First as
> > people are aware I'm working on organizing an event to promote GNU/Linux
> > and Fedora across students and IT Professionals (who might become
> > contributors), in fact the main thing about this event to establish a
> > bond between Fedora and Open Source enthusiasts.
> 
> Nelson, thanks for being so open and communicative and persistent about 
> this - it's great to see you bringing so much new energy and new ideas 
> to the team.  One of the most valuable things I've seen from watching 
> you get started is your ability to see and articulate your perspective 
> of someone from the marketing world who's getting started in open source 
> for the first time. You're gaining the ability to stand in both worlds 
> and informally translate between them, which is great because you and 
> others like you will see things and make connections that the others of 
> us may not notice. They're very different cultures, and the open source 
> way of doing things can sometimes be difficult to see and learn, so... 
> please keep doing this!
> 
> Comments inline.

When I want to seek attractive women, first thing I get into my mind is
to know where they are, the places they go and what they want on me, the
male Alpha ;)

When I want to gather future developers or current developers, I go to
where they hang around. Despite of all, this is Marketing not
diplomacy ;)


> 
> > Currently I'm rallying organizations who might contribute to this,
> > amongst them city halls, IT giants (who are employers of IT
> > professionals and Linux enablers), higher education students (future IT
> > engineers) and local students.
> >
> > The event I'm planning is to hold several conferences (between 8 to 10)
> > during 2 days and have a small Linux Install Fest/Party for the general
> > community.
> 
> Wow. That's a pretty ambitious start. Who do you have - or who can you 
> find - in terms of other Fedora people near you who can help organize 
> and run and support this magnitude of an event-spread?

2001, 500 people on a LIP. Easy to do... Got the manpower from GLUA
already to perform the LIP (Aveiro University Linux Users Group).

Conferences:
 - Availability of Luís Medina (Brasero Developer, GNOME Official
representation) - Confirmed.
 - Availability of Professor Ruben Mendes (ANSOL Founder, Debian
Packager in the past, Professor at University of Aveiro) - Confirmed
 - Availability of Dr. Diogo Gomes (Professor of University of Aveiro,
founder of GLUA) - Confirmed.
 - Availability of Nelson Marques (sniff sniff) - Confirmed.
 
 4 Conferences are set, 4 to go. Will propose later to ambassadors to
check the availability of people from Fedora to go there for
presentations/conferences.

 Doesn't seem that hard... I have also some other people on the backup
if needed, including Engineers from PT Inovação, Technology Deployer and
Market Leader in their segment ;) Should be enough to pound the local
industry and mobilize enough people. As my former employer I have
privilege relations with them.

 In addition my proposal to my Institute also included someone for a
conference of Product Management in the Scope of FOSS to mobilize YOU!
Will be confirmed during the next 2 weeks ;) And there's a lot of Geek
teachers/schoolars in this University.

> 
> > This event is going to provide feedback on the local community and their
> > probable future involvement in projects such as Fedora, thus, it will
> > also prepare ourselfs for a possible official PT_PT Fedora community.
> 
> This also sounds like something to approach the Ambassadors team with (I 
> know this has been suggested in the past, and Rodrigo is a good person 
> to get you started with that as well) and perhaps lurk in #fedora-latam 
> with to get ideas from the others in your geo.

Will be, in the right time. My institute organizes 180 Events per year.
This is a Marketing issue, at least the plan behind this event.

> 
> > On a personal level I'm working on a project to present to the Aveiro
> > City Hall, the share holder of EMA (Aveiro Municipal Stadium)
> <snip>
> 
> So you are thinking about getting the stadium to use (existing? 
> developed, already deployed in other places, supported?) FOSS products 
> for their infrastructure? I'm not sure where this fits, but keep talking 
> (maybe start blogging?) about it and perhaps someone will see it and go 
> "Aha! A perfect connection!"

Well I am forced to do this for evaluation on school. Every semester we
have a huge project. Unlucky me... My interest is, EMA is ruled by the
City Hall, the people that are leading EMA are the people that can make
the city hall inject money on future projects ;)

Yes I am planning to do that, a FOSS solution for video and audio
deployment, event transmission through the internet. Will get a IBM
Engineer to support the reliability of FOSS (and yes, they listen to IBM
like big fat companies) and cover the engineering side. My work as
Marketeer will be based in the benefits of such structure, like
advertising and generating revenue from it... (bah...)

> 
> >   I would like also to get my University involved in this as up to a
> > point my contributions go from a student of them and they indeed have a
> > lot to teach/preach that we can learn.
> 
> One place that might be useful to look for this is 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Campus_Ambassadors - Ryan Rix (of 
> Marketing and KDE fame, rrix in #fedora-mktg) is heavily involved with 
> that and might be able to help you get started with this.

One thing at each time ;) First my event and SWOT, then rest, else I
will digging my grave with a nervous breakdown ;) But yes, it's
information that is most usefull and will be used in due time.

> 
> > I don't know if this makes sense, but the theorical stuff should
> > provide the support needed to create a local Fedora community, which can
> > be sponsored by the City Hall. If such a community appears, there are
> > other things that need to be done, else it will disappear shortly after.
> > So we need to keep events up and keep people being present. For such to
> > happen having a space we can use is great. We can do local hack fests,
> > meetings, conferences, etc. If we can accomplish this, eventually go to
> > schools and give conferences about FOSS/Fedora, we can start nursing
> > future enthusiasts and such to be fond of us and foment their needs of
> > being a part of something great like Fedora.
> >
> >   This is what I am trying to accomplish, maybe a fool's dream, but like
> > the CEO of Coca Cola says:
> >
> >   "we only fail when we stop trying".
> 
> Congratulations, you're a community builder. :)

The kids of today are tomorrow's professionals, grabbing their attention
now will pay off in due time ;)

> 
> http://www.theopensourceway.org/wiki/Main_Page may be helpful - it's 
> still in the early stages and is rough and incomplete, but reading 
> through might give you some ideas, and be the basis for the spark of a 
> discussion with the folks working on it. (Hi, Karsten!)

No more holy or unholy wars for me ;) I will take a look.

> --Mel

-- 
Nelson Marques <07721 at ipam.pt>