[LEF] Linux Presentation Day in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

[Hauke Laging <hauke.laging AT linux-presentation-day.de>]

Hello,

I am a member of the board of the Berlin Linux User Group (BeLUG, a non-
commercial association). About a year ago I had an idea for a new kind 
of Linux event which should be targeted at people who don't know Linux 
yet and which should be very easy to organize. It is called the "Linux 
Presentation Day" – not very German but we intended from the beginning 
to expand this beyond Germany after some time. Here is an English 
summary:

http://www.linux-presentation-day.org/

On May, 9th 2015 we had the first event, limited to Berlin at eight 
locations. The second event (the first outside Berlin but also organized 
by BeLUG) was on November, 14th. 79 locations in 72 cities in three 
countries participated; the event had 1500 visitors (due to an 
unexpected lack of media coverage). Two new Linux User Groups have been 
founded.

Now we have started to look for organizations abroad for our next event 
as the main goal of the event is to make it so big that we reach a new 
level of media coverage. We were more than surprised when we were told 
that the Italians have been doing something very similar for 15 
years...!

http://www.linuxday.it/

Yesterday I have contacted about 25 French LUGs. One of them has replied 
and told me about Libre en Fête. I just got surprised replies on the 
German mailing list from people who regularly attend to RMLL or have 
been spending their vacation in France fpr years and never heard about 
it.

I hope that someone of you is willing to tell me more about Libre en 
Fête (so that I understand the differences) and answer my questions about 
the experiences you made.


We are looking for a few organizations (LUGs, similar associations, 
companies, schools, universities, ...) which are interested in such an 
event (LPD) and might participate in the LPD 2016.1 and use their 
experience from that for organizing it as a nationwide event for LPD 
2016.2.

http://www.linux-presentation-day.org/call-for/2016.1/

The date for the next event (LPD 2016.1) is April, 30th (Saturday). The 
date for 2016.2 will probably be the Italian date (October, 22th).

The Italians have announced to participate in LPD 2016.1. The nationwide 
Dutch LUG is interested in participating, two British cities are, too. 
And more countries have been and will be addressed. The aim is to have a 
Europe-wide event soon and a worldwide event within a few years.


The LPD is twice a year because it's little effort to organize it and we 
think that the (non-IT) media may cover a big Linux event twice a year 
but probably not more often. The Italians have their own event once per 
year (in October). They participate in April and will have an event 
that's more like ours in order to compare and improve their regular 
event from this experience. They will probably use the name Linux 
Presentation Day for the new April date.

Maybe some of you are interested to participate on October, 22nd (or 
some date around that; similar to you it's part of the LPD concept that 
the organizers can choose different dates), maybe under the name Linux 
Presentation Day in order to try some changes. My impression is that 
your events are much more effort to organize (even if that may not be a 
requirement). My aim is to have about 1,000 locations in several hundred 
cities in Germany in about two years. This should be possible because

a) the LPD helps found new LUGs
b) the adult education centers are very interested in participating
c) schools may participate inofficially (i.e. for their teachers, pupils 
and their parents only).


CU

Hauke
-- 
Hotline für den Linux Presentation Day: 030 / 55579620 (13–23 h)
    mobil: 0176 / 7482 7253 (13–23 h)

XMPP (Chat mit OTR): linux-presentation-day AT jabber.ccc.de
   OTR: 91626899 1C06F2BD 75EC2441 35C696CE 38F75997

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.