[PLUG] Linux Clinic at Freegeek

[Richard Konold]

On Sun, 2006-01-29 at 16:14, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I stopped by Freegeek on Saturday, and chanced upon Oso, and talked
> a couple of minutes about holding Linux Clinic at Freegeek on Sundays.
> He had heard about it, and thought the community council might like it.
> I am hard of hearing, and didn't catch all he said, so there might be
> some errors in what follows, but here goes:
> 
> Oso mentioned two gating items.  First, we need to convince someone
> authorized, with a key, to be there with us.  Second, these things
> are decided by the Freegeek community council, so we need to make
> our pitch to them.

Monitoring the PLUG and Free Geek maillists, I can see there is a great
deal of interest in restarting the Linux Clinic at Free Geek.  As a
Linux Advocate, I feel compelled to add my support to the effort.

I am the Sales Coordinator at Free Geek.  As a staff member, I have
keys, and the ability to provide oversight and responsibility for the
security of Free Geek during these sessions.  A knowledge of the Policy
and Operation of Free Geek are also necessary in planning the Clinic.

There are basically two approaches to setting up the clinic.  The first
would be to run it as a separate entity from Free Geek.  This would
require approval, and scheduling of the space on a continuous basis.  It
would also require a Staff person to be present, then the Clinic would
supply all of it's own leaders to conduct the clinic.  The second
approach would be to have Free Geek host the Clinic with the assitance
of PLUG and other volunteers, plus Free Geek Staff and volunteers.

Before any proposal can be submitted to council, a plan needs to be in
place to implement the Clinic.  I would ask that all of the interested
parties meet the Sunday before the council meeting, that would be Sun.
Feb. 12th, say 2pm in the afternoon.  I will host the meeting, provide
answers to questions about the space and Policies, so we can decide if
or how to proceed to the council with a proposal, and try to anticipate
what questions they may need answered to gain approval.  I do think they
would approve, as the Council is "everyone" at Free Geek, and there
seems to be a lot of interest there already.

If the council approves, I will commit to coming in at Noon each third
Sunday to open the space and provide security,safety, and oversight.  I
don't know how much help I will be, as I am usually a little burned out
that day, because I have dealt with customers and a million questions in
the Thrift Store all of Saturday.  I can however use the store's cd
burner to burn disto's in advance, and during the Clinic.

I saw someone question why not Saturday?  The answer is that Free Geek
is open for business Tuesday thru Saturday, 11am-7pm.  The  place is too
hectic, the Staff and Core volunteers are busy with the day to day, and
the classroom is used for classes most days we are open.  That only
leaves the days we are closed, Sunday and Monday.  Sunday seems to be
the only day that would fit working folks schedules.

Hope you can all make it to the meeting and help us get the ball in
play.

Rick Konold
Sales Coordinator
& Linux Advocate
Free Geek

> 
> The community council meets on the 3rd Wednesday of the month at
> 7:15pm ( see http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Community_Council ).
> We just missed the last one, the next one is on Feb 15.  We need to
> get on the agenda for that meeting, and have what we want to say 
> figured out.
> 
> ---
> 
> If we do this, our mix will change - we are moving out of a rich
> suburban high school and into industrial southeast.  We will probably
> have a lot of newbies just out of freegeek training, some random
> appearances by street people, and other possible upsets.  I think
> the change will be rewarding, but we may have to set up some extra
> procedures that Dan and Paul and Eric did not need.
> 
> I don't want to lead this, but I can contribute and participate.  I
> suggest that we put together a list of volunteers that can help the
> "keymaster" by learning the layout and directing attendees to the
> loo and cleaning up afterwards and such.  Given how much work this
> was for our previous Linux Clinic hosts, I would suggest at least
> 6 people, each committed to being there at least 8 months out of 12
> during the year.  I volunteer, so we need 5 more.  Remember, this is
> a commitment, so that means giving up other things for one Sunday a
> month.  The fearless leader will need to be there pretty much every
> month.
> 
> We need to pick which Sunday in the month.  The volunteers choose,
> of course.
> 
> So who wants to be Gozer//// leader of this motley crew?
> 
> Keith