There will be an upcoming meeting this Thursday the 27th at the Panera Bread in Longmont.

The agenda is:

1. discuss and attempt to finalize plans for the gutsy release party.
2. discuss how to best facilitate monthly meeting with a widely distributed group of members.
3. discuss the idea of regional coordinators.
4. brainstorm some ideas for a bigger, badder hardy party in April.
5. others as suggested and allowed for by time.

Recently, several members of the Colorado Local Community Team manned a Canonical/Ubuntu booth at the Technology in Education Conference in Copper Mountain, Colorado. The conference was attended by nearly one thousand classroom teacher, administrators and technology enthusiasts from around Colorado and a surrounding states. The booth was open in the conference exhibition hall on June 20 and 21. Using our own hardware, we demonstrated Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu, passed out CDs and pamphlets, and answered questions ranging from setting up thin-clients in schools to finding good educational applications.Edubuntu was the main focus and was run on an HP server in a thin-client configuration. Many attendees were particularly interested in using current hardware installations in a “dual-boot” environment. This involves using an Edubuntu server and desktop computers capable of PXE booting. This allows typical Windows based computers to be rebooted into a thin-client mode. In this way, computer labs that are primarily used to produce documents can now be used to access a wealth of open source educational applications. This capability was demonstrated with great success during a three-hour session on using open source software in schools which was presented by Jim Hutchinson and Bryan Gartner on June 19th with the help of several other CoLoCo members (see details in separate post). During our time in the booth, we also demonstrated various applications like Stellarium (a big hit), ran video clips, and showed how thin-client labs are set up. In true do-it-yourself Linux fashion, our “screen” was constructed from an un-ironed table cloth and power strips were daisy-chained together to accomodate all our equipment.

The booth was visited by a wide variety of individuals who expressed interest in both Ubuntu as an operating system and Edubuntu as an educational resource. Visitors to the booth came from all corners of education - teachers, administrators, district technology personnel - and from rural and urban districts. We even entertained someone from the Colorado Department of Education. Most everyone we spoke to expressed great interest in using Edubuntu in their school or district but also concern over how to actually implement such a change when they themselves were not in charge of technology or lacked experience with Linux. Emboldened by the enthusiasm of the Colorado Local Team members, we began to collect contact information, pointed visitors to our team’s website, and assured everyone that if they only asked they would find members willing to come out and help. This has led to a current team project focused on developing a way to offer local support to schools, or anyone, interested in using any flavor of Ubuntu. The team expects to “go live” with local support options within just a couple weeks.

Overall, the booth was a great success and many people went away with new ideas and tips on how to actually make something happen in their school or district. Too often, many great ideas are shared at such conferences, but the reality of education in the United States often prevents positive change. We not only shared great ideas, but backed it up with commitments to actually help make it happen.

CoLoCo members Jim Hutchinson, Bryan Gartner, Leon Jaimes and Neal McBurnett worked the booth. HP provided the big server for the LTSP demo. Canonical provided funding for the booth as well as materials to hand out. Richard Weideman of Canonical was instrumental in getting everything setup. Visit http://coloco.ubuntu-rocks.org or https://launchpad.net/~coloradoteam for more information.

Canonical is sponsoring a booth at the TIE conference. We’ve been hoping for this and now it’s a reality. What’s the catch? We have to man the booth ourselves. Please consider coming up to beautiful Copper Mountain and hang out for a bit. It’s also a great place to meet women. See you there.

BTW - the dates are June 19-22 for the conference and 20-21 for the booth.

I heard from Canonical today that they will pony up the cash for a booth in the exhibition hall. I think this will be a great opportunity to spread the word about ubuntu. We plan to have a working thin-client set up at the booth (2-3 terminals and the server) to show everyone the basic idea. Canonical is also sending/has sent a conference kit with goodies to give away. If anyone has any other ideas for the booth please share them. Also, sign up below if you will be spending any time at the conference and can help with the booth.

Ubucon Boulder will take place on Saturday, June 2. Among other things, part of the time will be devoted to discussing, planning and/or developing content for TIE. Visit the wiki page to learn more and sign up.

The second planning meeting was held today. A brief summary of outcomes is listed below.

Attention: The next planning meeting is scheduled for May 18 (Friday) at 6:00pm at the Saxby’s in Loveland (west of I-25 on 34 in the Chili’s shopping center). See below for more info.