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.

Why don’t more people actually volunteer 2-3 hours per month?

One word, Apathy.  Yes, apathy.

I believe apathy is what kills communities around the globe.  They don’t have to be any specific type of community, but when someone, or enough people stop caring about a particular activity, event or cause, the community will die.  I don’t have any cold, hard facts on this, just my experiences, what I’ve read and my gut telling me it’s so.

If it were up to me, as an individual running a medium sized community conference based around Free and Open Source Software, I’d suggest that everyone come and spend 2-3 hours volunteering at the event.  While I know that’s not realistic, it can combat the apathy of which I speak.  But that’s kind of a problem too.

Where are we heading with this discussion?

For one, there are only so many volunteer positions available at the Utah Open Source Conference, or at a LUG meeting, or any such event.  But there are events that are currently not happening.  Imagine if everyone in the FOSS community in the Mountain West spent those 2-3 hours each month either helping a particular event, or creating their own special event or group.  What would the FOSS community landscape look like?

Each month I run into at least 5 people who want to help out within UTOS.  Each time I tell them the same thing, we have lots of things we need help with, we meet here at this time each month and would love to have you attend.  On rare occasion, we get a new volunteer coming to our meetings.  Sometimes they stay, sometimes they realize it’s too much and other things are a priority, and sometimes, they get so excited, they become one of the Utah Open Source Foundation’s ‘Core Team’.  So far, it’s been working well, but recently, we’ve been experiencing growing pains of our own and a little apathy as well.

Another thing to note, larger communities tend to have already dealt with this problem and have a plethora of answers for dealing with things like Apathy, a lack of knowledge and all of the other standard problems that smaller communities must deal with to thrive.  Most of those answers aren’t documented anywhere, at least not very well documented.

How does a community suffer because of apathy?

I am going to use the Utah Open Source Foundation to give some examples of where we fail.  Currently, I fear that our community suffers from apathy for a few reasons.

1. The economy.  While it’s definitely important for people to have jobs, a paycheck and a promise of more work, I find that this is among the lamest excuse people use for not helping.  If you aren’t participating in the community, you are doing yourself a disservice.  Just think of all of the lost opportunities for employment, education, skill improvement (aka resume material) and networking.
2. Family.  Again, I find that a lot of people in our community use their family as an excuse for not participating.  I’m not saying that families aren’t important.  In fact, I would say that participating in the FOSS community is a perfect example of how to show your family what you do, as well as encourage them to be part of a community and volunteer their time to their passions.  Families do take time, but I can guarantee that everyone can find 2-3 hours per month to volunteer.
3. Time.  While possibly related to the other two issues, time itself can get in the way of volunteering to help the community.  People regularly fear that they can’t dedicate enough time to help, when a community really just wants people to dedicate a few hours a month.  If you are spending a couple hours a month in front of your TV, you could cut that down and spend it helping your community instead.

Watch for part three of this series next week.

Cheers,

Herlo

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 spent the morning at PodCampSLC 2010, including my presentation at 10am entitled ‘Capturing audio and video on the cheap’ or ‘How to keep the wife happy while buying lots of electronic equipment’.  I’ve been tinkering with audio and video recording equipment for several years now as part of the Utah Open Source Foundation and the Utah Open Source Conference and figured I had a lot to share.

My presentation slides were pretty basic, but cover some of the equipment I have purchased on the cheap.  In addition, we recorded the presentation using FreeSeeR, a free software application for  recording the desktop screen, external video and/or audio.

Enjoy the presentation slides and video as I really enjoyed presenting and am looking forward to PodCampSLC 2011!

Cheers,

Herlo

I was saddened to hear this, Drew and his crew have been doing a bang-up job and have been great hosts.  We will surely miss the BetaLoft.

As all good things must end, I’ve decided to stop holding the SLLUG Daytime monthly meetings as well. We’ve had a good run and SLLUG Daytime has been decently attended.  However, for several reasons which I will not go into here, I decided that I cannot run SLLUG daytime.  If someone else is interested in pursuing the continuation of SLLUG Daytime on their own, I’d be happy to hand over the reigns.

But there is some good news to go with the bad.  In the future, I plan to replace SLLUG Daytime with something of great value.  Something we can do regularly as well, maybe just not monthly.

I want to thank all of those who’ve ever attended SLLUG Daytime and have made it such a success.  I especially want to thank those who presented, as I know your time is precious, but you chose to prepare and share with us.  A special thanks to the folks on the SLLUG board who graciously let us use the SLLUG name, it was much appreciated.

In the future, watch for more activities from the Utah Open Source Foundation, as well as more opportunities to participate in the community and grow free and open source software.  I’m excited for the future.

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

The reason I’m posting is that I have been accepted as a speaker for Ignite Salt Lake 3 at the Murray Theatre on August 20.

I’ve thinking about my presentation and I think I’ve got a good idea for what I am going to do, but I am just fleshing out my ideas here.

My talk is entitled: Utah Open Source – Free Software Abounds

I plan talking about the basic concept of free software, the culture and how we do open source in Utah.  I intend to close out the presentation showing off the Utah Open Source Conference and it’s benefit to the community.

I’m planning on having some real fun at Ignite Salt Lake.  I sure hope you all will come and join me on August 20 at the Murray Theatre.

Cheers,

Herlo

Salt Lake County

Fri, May 29, 12:30pm – 2pm
My Thai, 1425 S 300 W, SLC, UT (map)

Davis/Weber County

Fri, May 29, 12:30pm – 2pm
Pad Thai, 1986 N Hill Field Rd #8, Layton, UT (map)

Utah County

Fri, May 29, 12:30pm – 2pm
Thai Chili Gardens, 430 West 800 North, Orem, Ut (map)

You can see the original post here.

Cheers,

Herlo

Last year, we started a project called utos-conman.  This project in about 3-5 months became the system that ran the speaker approval process, speaker listings, sponsor display, etc. for the Utah Open Source Conference 2008.  In 2009, we’re looking to make some improvements that will take us one step further to the ultimate open source conference management system.  Whether that statement is true or not, I want to push forward some goals for utos-conman.

To start off with, I worked this year with the Southern California Linux Exposition (SCaLE) to get their scale registration system open sourced and available.  It is now available, thanks Lei, and it can be checked out using svn from the google code project site.  This is exciting, and I’m happy to have the SCaLE code available because it provides a very powerful registration system, which includes the ability to create tickets, coupons, promotions, add-ons, reporting, check-in and much, much more.

Goals

The goals for this year’s Hack Night are going to be two fold, because now we have two projects.

First, let’s talk about scalereg:

• Porting to Django 1.0 (completed, patch coming)
• Adding back the validation and form management that was removed to get to Django 1.0
• Adding a new theme for UTOS, we hope to make this generic enough to let anyone add some css and images

Next is utos-conman:

• Working toward reusable app status.  Making it easier to integrate with apps like scalereg
• Adding volunteer management
• Adding better room management
• Adding upload feature to the sponsors admin section
• Integrating video and audio links

I’d like to take a moment to thank all the folks who’ve worked on these projects over the years and I look forward to having an awesome code base.  There are many many more features that we’ll be looking at in the future, including reporting, auditing and off-line capability.  For now, I’m more interested in making things work and getting it up and running.  In the next month or two, I hope to have a full-fledged registration system in place for the Utah Open Source Conference 2009.

Cheers,

Herlo