Re: Interest in SIG?

["Burke, Jason" <JBurke@lrs.com>]

All of the ideas that have been shared here sound great to me, and
I just wanted to take a sec to toss my thoughts into the mix.

Kara's scheduleing ideas are great, and I'm all for implementing them.
I have a few additional thoughts on the topic selection. I've been 
thinking about the best approach to a training framework for Linux 
for a while now, and I keep running into some interesting problems
that can hinder the effectiveness of this type of project. I'll just list
them here:

1.) What should we consider "core", must-have knowledge on the 
     Linux system? And in what order do we present this info?

2.) How can we effectively reiterate over these core concepts, to
     consistently include new members, without boring the people
     who have been comming for a while?

My answer to the first question is that core knowledge for new 
Linux users is anything that covers installation, configuration, and
basic usage (commands, using X windows, etc) of the system, and
I would like to see us fully define the scope of what that really means.
Also, I would define the order of those things in the same way that 
I install my system, but I realize that there's a lot of different ways
to do installations, and I'm not going to presume that my way is 
best (even if it is ;).

The second question is a bit more difficult, but I think that we have
a couple of choices. First a basic assumption that we need to make
is that these tutorials comprise a whole unit, and the people comming
need to accomplish that whole unit before things will make sense.
This also means that people entering in the middle will have problems 
with the material, and if it lasts too long we will be limited in our
ability 
to expand the group to include new people.

Now, I would like to be able to get as many people involved with the 
Newbie Night as possible, so I would think that keeping the scope down 
to a minimum would help facilitate this (perhaps we should make the core
class only 4 hours long?). Also, I think that we could constantly recycle 
the core material so that we have, in essence, two tracks running at the 
same time. What does everyone else think?

The possible downside to this is that _we_ (the people giving the class) 
might start to get bored after a while of doing the same thing over and
over in such a short period of time. Any thoughts on how to relive this?

Here's my list of what might be core topics:

Installing the system 
	Partitioning your Hard Drive
	GMT or Local Time?
	Installing your printer
	Configuring X windows
	Setting up your Internet Access
Overview of the system
	Connecting to the Internet
	Printing
	Useful Software Tools
Using X windows (Gnome or KDE?)
	Starting X
	Getting Around.
Using the command line
	Useful commands
	Installing new software
	
I think this is basic enough. Thoughts, additions?

Actually, now that I'm thinking about this we could probably
start out by doing the above 4 hour unit in two months and
then after that we could recycle the above topics in the first
hour, and do something new and interesting in the second 
hour.

Well that's my two pennies. Let me know what you think.

Jason

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