How do we address this problem?  Who does it?

In other words, how do small to medium communities battle Apathy?

In all honesty, I don’t have the answer for this question.  If I did, I’d be preaching it to every community group that would listen.  But it does occur to me that the/re are a few things the folks in charge can do to help.  And some of these are documented by the larger communities too.

1. First thing that comes to mind is to build a proper structure.  A meritocracy where those who do the work can decide what gets done.  As most will note, this is no different from any other Free Software development project.  But we need to state it out loud.  If you do the work in the community, you get to decide how the community functions. As part of this process, community leaders can define a loose structure where others can join up, and help build where they find holes.  It’s a definite organic structure, but one that really works well when encouraged.
2. Have something people want, and give it to them.  For us, it’s the Utah Open Source Conference and the other events the Foundation has been providing, like hackUTOS, Nerds in the Sun, Geek Lunch, etc.   Most of these events are free and for anyone to enjoy, learn and network.  However, I can see the need for even more events and services that UTOS can provide.
3. Remind people regularly that community is here.  Reminders are very important.  It’s like what Coke and Pepsi do, constantly remind you they are out there.  The only real difference is that they are looking to sell you something for money.  UTOS and other communities are really here to help you grow and learn.
4. Constantly invite people to join the community and help.  The community is a process that is always evolving and growing, people are needed to make it evolve and grow the way they see it.  Notice I said the way they see it.  It’s up to the community members to decide where the community goes.
5. Get out of the way.  This is somewhat of a corollary to step 4, but it’s really important to point out.  Once the community machine is going, don’t put process and leadership in the way.  The community can do what it needs to do if we just get out of the way, don’t be an obstacle to progress of the community.

As UTOS, we’ve excelled at some parts of this list, and failed at other parts.  I suspect many of the other communities around have succeeded at some of the parts as well.

Mostly, I wrote this to help me understand what the goals for UTOS will be as we start to expand into a more regional community.  But I think these things can help us all deal with apathy and encourage others to get involved.  I hope to hear from the community on this as my article is definitely a work in progress.  I believe I’ve got a good set of problems and possible solutions, but it’s definitely not me that is going to implement most of them.

Please take a few hours out of the month of June and help us grow and become an exciting, active prosperous community.  You’ll feel better for it, and you’ll definitely make a few friends along the way, grow your skillset, and possibly even encourage someone else to join up and help.

What started out as a simple idea in my backyard in Springville, Utah has blossomed into something much larger, a community of people who want to participate in the coolest events in the Mountain West.   Many of those events are hosted right here in Utah.

While there are other, larger communities in cities like Boston, New York and Los Angeles, the Mountain West has something that most other communities don’t have, a sense of volunteerism, community and brotherhood.  This even holds true for the most part in the Free and Open Source [FOSS] community.  I’ve really enjoyed being part of the Utah Open Source Foundation and Conference for the past 4 years and look forward to seeing it grow beyond Utah and its humble roots.

There are some really good examples of the FOSS community coming together right here in the Mountain West.  These include Local User Groups like the Salt Lake Linux User Group, Idaho State LUG, MontanaLinux.org, Rexburg Open Source as well as some great community events like AbleConf, PodcampSLC, Geek/Blogger Dinners, hackUTOS, BYU Unix User Group Installfests and many more.

While each of these events are great in their own right, there could be so many more.  But why are there not more amazing, or more complete events?

My real question here is why aren’t there more people helping do more of these events?

If I must use an example from my experience, I find that a lot of people really enjoy attending events and networking with others.  They believe that when they do this, they will have stronger relationships and when (not if) they need to change jobs, those they networked with will likely know of a position available.  While this is generally true, it seems to me that if people actually helped with these events, they’d actually have more contacts and more opportunities when they need to find work fast.

Just think about that premise for a few minutes…

If you spend just 2-3 hours per month, yes I said per month, volunteering your time toward the FOSS community, there will be many more opportunities for you when you need it most.

Read the next segment on ‘Combating Apathy in Communities‘.

Cheers,

Herlo

I have been looking at airfare, hotel and other travel accommodations to FUDCon, but I seem to have more options than I can count.  Maybe some of you can make recommendations?  So here’s the details of my dilemma:

Option 1: Fly direct to Toronto

Now, of course, this is the easiest of the three options; in and out of Toronto International Airport (YYZ) is a great way to go.  What’s that you say?  Oh, right.  The cost prohibitive trip of a ticket that is well over $600.  WOW! That is all I can say…

Option 2: Fly to Boston and ride the FUDBus

To me, this option is the most appealing.  While I know that I can most likely crash with someone in Boston and then ride the FUDBus up, it’s going to be a bit more painful, but it might be worth the organizational headache to make what could become an epic hackfest (8+ hours) happen for me.

In this case, I would have to fly in Thursday evening, since the FUDBus leaves at around 9am from Alewife station in Boston.  And upon return, Tuesday morning could turn into Tuesday afternoon or Tuesday evening.  A bit scarier here for scheduling return flights.  The other part of this is the actual FUDCon event is only Saturday through Monday (Dec 5-7) so I would have to miss 5+ days of work, not just 1 or possibly 2 with the other options.

The price of this flight is a mere $409 round trip, a savings of over $180, so it could be worth the extra time as long as I don’t have to get an extra hotel room.

Option 3: Fly to New York City and ride a bus to get to the FUDBus

I have a good friend in Jon Stanley, who offered to put me up at his place on Thursday night, which is essentially the same as flying into Boston.  But there are a few benefits as well.  One is that the bus from NYC to Boston has an additional 4ish hours we’d get to hack and chat.  Since I’m really wanting to join the Fedora Infrastructure team, it would be a good opportunity to get my wings.  The other is that the cost from SLC to JFK is another $50 – $75 cheaper than Boston.

The drawbacks of having to leave earlier and travel longer seem to be a mitigating circumstance and really might be something I want to do.  I’m just not sure I’m willing to awake at 4am Eastern (2am Mountain) to take the bus to take the FUDBus.

Option 4: Fly to Buffalo and ride the bus to Toronto

This option seems the most economical and has the least amount of hassles save actually flying into Toronto.  Essentially, I would fly into Buffalo on Friday afternoon, catch a bus that would drive across the border and into Toronto.  The return trip is about as simple, just hop on the bus on Tuesday morning, and fly home that afternoon from Buffalo.  The cost is great too!  At a measly $200 round trip from Salt Lake, now that’s a deal!

I think the thing I am fighting with Buffalo, is that I’ll be doing this all by myself.  While it seems economical, I really, really would like to get on that FUDBus for the hackfest I am sure will happen.  Collaborating for an additional 8 hours is really really tempting.  Going to Buffalo would pretty much eliminate that option.  While I am a bit concerned about crossing the border and such, I don’ think it’s going to be the decision maker or cause me any real heartache.

Decisions, Decisions!

So what would you do?  How would you go to Toronto?  I have the funds right now and want to get everything booked in advance so I don’t have to worry about the details later.  I think my biggest debate point has to be whether to ride the FUDBus.  Money is probably the secondary issue, but comparing that seems to put Buffalo first without question.

I’m really excited either way for FUDCon this year.  I have some really good ideas to share and want to start building out a great Ambassador portal as well.  More on that to come!

Cheers,

Herlo

Now, I’ll be there from around 9am to about 1pm, so it might be good to come and hang out.  I’ll be dropping some Fedora DVDs and CDs by (which I need more Live Media already gah!) so people can pick them up and try out the coolest operating system in the world!

At about 3pm, I’m headed over to a friends house for boardgames.  We’re going to play ‘Arkham Horror’, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, which should be fun as I have never played it before.  Both jennifer and I are attending with some friends I’ve had for a short while now.  Should be a blast.

If it is really good, I’ll suggest playing it at the Boardgame Bash at UTOSC 2009 (you knew I couldn’t resist putting in a plug for the conference, did you?!)

Lastly, I’ll be settling in for the evening probably recovering from the hard week around 10 or 11 catch up on sleep and prep for golfing with my brothers on Sunday.

It’ll be a very nice weekend I think, looking forward to the excitement and relaxation.  I’m very excited to be semi-busy, but doing what I love.  I sure hope it turns out as well as I anticipate.

Cheers,

Herlo

21:37 <herlo> did you say you were willing to cook breakfast for us during UTOSC ??
21:37 <herlo> :-P
21:37 <herlo> I couldn’t remember if you agreed, or balked
21:37 <Jennifer> I did. I will make sure I don’t work so I can do it properly.
21:37 <Jennifer> 5 people, right. Plus us, of course.
21:38 <Jennifer> ?
21:38 <herlo> yeah
21:38 <Jennifer> Yep, for 3 days? I can do that. :)
21:38 <herlo> so far, I have Ian, Scott, Larry and Mirano and possibly Scott (from LA)
21:39 <herlo> it does mean that it has to be ready kind of early though…
21:40 <JenniferDean> Yep
21:40 <herlo> kk, grerat!
21:40 <herlo> or just great!
21:40 <JenniferDean> That’s what prep the night before is for
21:40 <herlo> lol, yeah
21:41 <JenniferDean> The only rule is: stay out while I’m cooking. Lol

So as you can see, I just had to comment about it right now!  Jennifer is awesome!

Looks like our guests will be well taken care of during UTOSC 2009!!

See you all there! October 8-10, 2009.  Register today!

Cheers,

Herlo

New Job

Well my new job is setting up nicely as a Web Developer/System Administrator at StoryRock.com.  We do yearbook and scrapbooking software.  I’m in charge of the website and infrastructure here, and so far there are a lot of good problems to solve.  I’ve been introduced to Ruby on Rails and am getting the hang of it as well.  I’ve implemented a new Firewall and OpenVPN tunnel, configured a new staging server and dealt with a disk space issue on our  web server, all in about a week and a half.  I still have plans to finish implementing an openfire jabber server (mostly complete thanks to help from another great Guru, Aaron Toponce).

Consulting

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with a fellow by the name of Trevyn Meyer.  He owns a little consulting firm in Orem called ESource, They have been giving me steady web work for the past few weeks.  I’ve been able to do things from wordpress themes and plugins to  migrating bugzilla.  It has brought in a little cash I needed just to get me through.  This has been a great experience.  Because of ESource, I was able to publish a fairly useful plugin because of its benefits to the community.  I plan to get it on wordpress’ codex at some point in the future.

Fedora

Over the Christmas break, and mostly because I am not overwhelmed at work (yet).  I was able to spend some time creating a few tools to benefit the project.  First was the Fedora Ambassador North America (FAmNA) Resource Requests Tracker.  With the help of Jon Stanley, we now have a way of tracking requests from North American Fedora Contributors for things like T-Shirts, Media, AmbassadorKits, Stickers, etc.  I anticipate this being a very busy site and that we’ll be getting more requests as the word gets out after the holidays and FUDCon.

I took the time this weekend to build a prototype of the Fedora Media Box.  It’ll be part of what is to become the AmbassadorKit.  We’re having a hackfest to design and finish the AmbassadorKit so we can start shipping it out.  Look for this as a new option on the FAMNA Requests trac instance.

Speaking of FUDCon, along with Chris Tyler and probably a few other people, we are planning to stream and record audio and video for much of FUDCon F11 Boston.   I was able to purchase a wireless lavalier (aka lapel) microphone this week and it should arrive in time for me to bring it along for presenters.  I am seriously excited to get the audio and video out to more people than ever.  If you have a camera, or recording devices, please bring them.  If you don’t have equipment, but want to help, let us know.

Cheers,

Clint

While I am a pretty solid Linux Admin, what I really think I’d be good at, is Project Management.  The problem being that I’ve little to no paid experience for such a thing.  The reason, however, that I believe I’d be a good fit for something like this is the fact that I’ve been in charge of the Utah Open Source Conference and it’s successful rise to the largest community conference in Utah.

Last year, we had a successful conference after a year of planning.  This year’s conference was much less work thanks to all the great volunteers, but it was still a big success, and a lot of work.  I’m excited to say that this is my pride and joy, and why I think I would be a good fit for a Project Manager.

In addition, I’m looking into starting my own business, the only problem there is the timing.  I’d like to launch it soon, but I don’t have enough capital to really get going anywhere.  However, I may still do this as I think the ideas I have would work well and could really benefit an open source community as well as small/medium sized tech businesses.  In fact, I have a meeting set up for tomorrow morning with someone who’s believed in me from the beginning on this endeavor.  I’m excited to try my hand as an employer.

I do want to mention that while this isn’t a plea to help get me a job, but rather some thoughts I needed to scribble down, I am actively looking for work.  If you have anything that might fit, here’s the latest version of my resume (in pdf form).

Guess we’ll see where the world takes me on this fun, fun ride I’ve been on for 30-some-odd years now.  And I guess that’s the point, I’m really enjoying this ride called life and so while it’s a bit of a stressful time, I’m grateful to accept these challenges.  I love solving problems, and this is just another small problem.