Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 19:20:15 -0600 From: Melanie Vonfange <melanie.vonfange@gmail.com> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Announcing Several Advocacy Sites Message-ID: <9df43a1e0903051720l68c9c3e2gba2871efe2345f92@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi, I am Melanie VonFange, long time lurker and fan of FreeBSD and PC-BSD.=A0 I have been around for about a year on various forums and mailing lists learning all I can about FreeBSD and PC-BSD.=A0 I imagine I met quite a few of you at=A0 MeetBSDCalifornia '08. *waves*.=A0 One of the things that really excited me was putting a face with a name. The BSD community at large is extremely friendly and open and I was happy to be able to sit in on the talks and meet everyone. I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to help out with a few advocacy sites and I hope to share some of my excitement here.=A0 One of our main goals is to break down the market barriers for BSD adoption and I feel we have a few ways to do that now.=A0 People WANT to do something different.=A0 They feel that they are limited to either Windows or Linux or Mac OS X.=A0 A few people have heard of Unbuntu, but your average everyday user feels that they have no choice in what Operating System they use.=A0 I think we all want to change that. One barrier is name recognition. We need get the name out there. One way we have to do that is SpreadBSD.org (http://www.SpreadBSD.org), an affiliate site designed and to spread the message of FreeBSD and PC-BSD via message boards,blogs,forums and other social networking platforms. SpreadBSD will be a place to collect advocacy information as well. This should help by having a central repository of information to educate and influence executive and IT management. There is even a karma points system. Currently we are looking for articles and and appreciate any suggestions you might have as to how we can make it better. A second barrier is helping non-tech people understand what FreeBSD and PC-BSD are. My own biggest barrier was finding the information about installation, known hardware issues, whether it would work with my computer etc, all in a central location. I spent alot of time googling, fearing the install, and trying to figure out things on my own.=A0 I am one of the lucky people that has friends who are behind FreeBSD and PC-BSD. Not everyone is so lucky. I set up a social networking group called PC-BSD Users on the ning.com social networking site (http://pcbsdusers.ning.com/) I added some videos about installing and I plan on adding more user-friendly tutorials and make it more of a community site. I would be happy to add any suggestions you might have and invite you all to join me. A huge third barrier is application and driver support. We need to have more, obviously. Time is also a valuable commodity. We are also limited by proprietary drivers and programs.SponsorBSD Projects (http//:www.sponsorBSD.org) gives people the opportunity to network and connect sponsors with developers. Right now, the site needs a little bit of TLC (mainly in the form of coders and designers) and test sponsors and developers. I know that setting time to work on things is a bit difficult and this is a centralized way rather than having to dig around postings and not being sure where to put advertisements for development.We also plan on adding a developer wish list and development teams will be able to split the bounty automatically. This is truly exciting time, and I hope we all work together to get the name out there. If you want to volunteer for any of these projects or have any suggestions, please feel free to email me. We have a great OS, and it just needs more people to know about it!=A0 So 3 sites to check out, http://www.SpreadBSD.org, http://www.sponsorBSD.org and http://pcbsdusers.ning.com/ -- Melanie VonFange PC-BSD Project BSD Advocate Melanie@pcbsd.org
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