[ale] potential new home for ALE website, philosophy, and a proposal

[James P. Kinney III]

I have been requested to provide hosting for the ALE website and mailing
list.

I have also been requested to reconsider my abrupt disassociation with
ALE as well by more people than I have responded to. My apologies to
those I have yet to answer.

I have pasted the central home page text from ale.org below:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts (ALE) are a growing group of people in the
Atlanta metropolitan area who all share an interest in Linux. 

Founded in December 1994, we have hosted a plethora of monthly meetings
with talk topics ranging from "How to Configure PPP" to "How to Write
Device Drivers". We usually have around 40 - 100 people at each meeting.

The ALE group is loosely organized, with a few people acting as contact
points and no charter to bog things down. Anyone is welcome to come to
the meetings; there is no membership, fees or any other formalities. To
become a member, just show up. Our primary interest is in getting
information about Linux to members of the Atlanta community.

ALE has three monthly meetings to accomodate the growing Linux
Enthusiast population of the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Central
meeting is held at Emory University on the second Thursday of the month.
The ALE NorthEast meeting is held at Edeltacom Data Center on the first
Thursday of the month. The ALE NorthWest meets the third Thursday at the
Weather Channel. Directions are on the left sidebar.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to point out that this body of text does not contain the
words "professional" or "sysadmin". Nor does it insinuate that the only
thing discussed is Linux. It does say quite clearly in the first
sentence that ALE is a group of people. The point of commonality that
defines this group is everyone possesses an interest in Linux. The
degree of that interest is not defined. It does not indicate any degree
of personal or professional involvement in Linux. Bill Gates and Steve
Balmer would qualify for "membership" in ALE. 

I don't think they would last long :)

But then again, we might be able to turn them to the light side. 
<cue impressive music>

The second paragraph is quite clear about the lack of formalities and
charter. While the primary interest is in getting Linux information to
members of the Atlanta community, it is not the only interest.

I am discussing this in the full group forum in the hopes of smoothing
ruffled feathers (my own included) and to also put the divisiveness in
the past. 

A long time ago, in a very local land, members of this group managed to
pull off what is still regarded as THE BEST Linux show event anywhere in
the United States. They managed to do this with no controls on the group
discussions. 

For many reasons, The Atlanta Linux Showcase can not be revived. For
other reasons it should not be revived. 

As much fun as talking about Linux is, it is nothing compared watching a
newbie "get it!". There is not much I enjoy more than seeing that
cartoon light bulb turn on as a face lights up when they understand the
solution to a problem.

ALE members have been involved in many install-fests. The feedback has
always been good. Maybe it's time to consider an effort to do an install
fest of a sort but on a bigger scale.

As anyone who has children in public schools in the Metro-Atlanta area
knows, Microsoft is pretty much the law of the land. Daniel Howard and
William Fragakis lit a fire under Atlanta Public Schools by converting
one elementary school to Linux thin clients using K12LTSP.

I am currently (battling bureaucracy) involved on the next step of this
transition for Atlanta Public Schools by designing and implementing
(with some excellent assistance from Aaron Ruschetta and Jeff Hubbs) the
process to go "enterprise class" for a total of 7 schools, 33 servers,
2189 thin clients and 4378 students (plus a mess of cables, gigabit
switches and laser printers).

Cool, huh! (yes, there will be an ALE presentation)

There is a Georgia Educational Technology Conference in November in
Atlanta. But the vendors that will be there are, with 2 exceptions,
hawking the same old closed-source, per-seat license software that has
put the schools in the mess they are in now.

The two outliers in that vendor list are a Linux firewall support group
(stupid, busted java page only works on IE from the show site so I can't
pull up the name -sorry) and Local Net Solutions (we got a booth as
close to Apple as we could get!)

What the SouthEast needs is a big, loud, raucous, flashy, whiz-bang
open-source expo geared toward the techs in education and non-profit
organizations. They are the ones who have to work on the broken systems.
They are the ones who will be working on the new Linux stuff once the
penguinistas take over the world (sorry - out loud voice again). They
will need exposure, training and a ready source of data to help steer
things away from the mess they are stuck using now.

Danial, William and I put our heads together are realized that a 501(c)3
organization was needed to tackle the upper management level of getting
schools (and many other types of traditionally underfunded
organizations) to look at the benefits of using Linux and Linux thin
clients in particular to provide a common desktop platform for large
numbers of staff and students. Thus was formed the Georgia Open Source
Education Foundation. www.gosef.org

GOSEF is tackling to top of the management food chain. But the _real_
work is done by the techs. If they can say to the CIO "Oh, yeah. We know
about that Linux stuff. It works real well and we have experience on it
because of that conference last year", ALE can accomplish that last line
in paragraph 2 of the text block from _way_ above in a BIG way!

Betcha though I was rambling off topic again :)

When the techs start asking for Linux stuff and the teachers are asking
for Linux stuff and GOSEF is passing out thousands of live Linux CDs,
kids start getting working technology that the teachers can rely on so
the it gets used. Then a new generation of Linux friendly geeks
graduates and the world changes. 

Besides, isn't that the _real_ goal of Linux - taking over the world ;}

So, yes, I will host the ALE website and mailing list. I will even be
happy to setup an ale-tech list that someone (not me) can moderate.

Yes, I have been persuaded to reaffiliate myself with ALE.

And yes, I have been bitten with the bug for a new Linux show (we
haven't had diddly-squat since ALS left in the South).

Hey! My ALS t-shirts are getting really thin and ratty. I need some new
schwag! Look on the bright side, it already has one corporate sponsor.

-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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