[ale] ALE Installs Success for US Social Forum!

[aaron]

Now that the very successful U.S. Social Forum has wrapped up
I can take a moment to thank the FOSS movement and the Atlanta
area Open Source communities for their most excellent and
invaluable support of the event.  Independence day also seems
a fitting time to start an acknowledgment for all those who
directly and indirectly helped forward the ideals of freedom,
democracy, civil liberty and social justice that the Social Forum
represents and will continue to defend.

In recognition of the Freedom Friendly USSF spirit, the forum's
Information and Communications Technology team was very
committed to the exclusive use of Free & Open Source software
technologies for every aspect of the event. That choice also
facilitated the environmentally friendly use of recycled computers
for all of the needed administration, registration and media
support services.  Almost 90 computers were wired, wiped and
installed with Ubuntu Linux for the event -- including 60 that were
purchased from the Atlanta Tech Corps recycling group and 28
systems that were donated by Free IT of Athens.

The biggest thanks go to the volunteers at the ALE "Super-sized"
Install Fest we held on June 23rd.  ALE member Brian Pitts worked
out a network installation process using partimage that allowed a
dozen industrious friends from ALE, LUG at GT and the USSF to
prep and install about 75 Linux systems in a single afternoon! Over
the following week myself and Brian prepped a dozen cherry picked
machines to build 4 network routing boxes and 8 media capture
and processing stations for the forum's Media Justice Center.

The 38 Linux systems allocated to registration ran like clockwork and
they flawlessly handled the processing of over 9,000 registrations!
When not being used for registration the systems were also made
available (and were heavily used) for public Internet access.

The 8 Ubuntu Studio systems assigned to media pool duty helped
to capture, convert and post over 200 gigabytes of DV footage,
audio files and images for open Creative Commons sharing via a
local network file server, which also pumped any compressed
versions to the USSF web server. About 30 other Linux
workstations were deployed to the Media Justice Center
classrooms for use in media workshops, streaming broadcasts,
blogging and general Internet access for journalists.

The crew from Mayfirst.org that managed the (all FOSS) software
side was also critical to the success.  Their website programming,
network and database skills provided a highly functional design
which helped circumvent numerous disasters -- like when their
service provider's trunk line went down 15 minutes before start of
registration and they were able to reroute to a backup server on an
entirely different network trunk in a matter of 20 minutes!

The success of the U.S. Social Forum took a monumental effort,
but worthwhile endeavors like this usually do. Again, many thanks
to everyone involved on the Freedom Friendly technical side for
your support of this globally significant event!  I believe we may
have helped to dispelled some of the justifiably negative international 
perceptions of our nation and its people.

With great appreciation,
Aaron Ruscetta
ICT, ALE, LNS

PS: Some of the Linux systems used at the forum may be made
available for free to secular non-profit organizations in the Atlanta
area (certified 501c3).  If you know of a qualified organization in
need of 3  to 10 systems, please email me off list:
<aaron at pd.org> or <arxaaron at gmail.com>