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Setting The Stage

Our first SupportSaturday held on Saturday December 5th 2009 was a major success.

Our second SupportSaturday is Saturday January 30th 2010.

Events like these really help put Ubuntu Vancouver on the map and are a great way to spread Ubuntu all across the city by showing people that great software is indeed made better with great community. People come for help and leave feeling the Ubuntu spirit. Problems solved with a friendly smile. People come for demos and information and leave feeling enthusiastic about Ubuntu!

Let's get an even bigger crew together, and even better organization this time and make our next event even more amazing.

Cheers,
Randall
Ubuntu Vancouver Buzz Generator

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Planning Info

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If you are planning to help organize the event and/or be at the event as a helper, then add your name to the list below or contact one of the event managers. SupportSaturdays work well because they are organized and planned carefully.

Also please subscribe to this page. VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT!! Click here to do that https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CanadianTeam/Vancouver/SupportSaturdays/Planning/Session2?action=subscribe

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Please add your notes and information. In general, it's better to add comments and information that clarify what's already here.

This page can be a template for future SupportSaturdays, if we make it detailed!

Our second SupportSaturday is scheduled for Jan. 30th 10am - 2:30pm. (The crew will begin set-up at 9am. The venue will open to the public that has RSVP'd at 10am. Others will be admitted at 11am (the time posted on the public signs/flyers). Support activities need to be fully concluded by 2:30pm to allow tear-down and clean up.)

There will be a "dress rehearsal" on Thursday Jan 28th, regular meeting place at VCC 6pm. We'll use that time ensure we haven't forgotten anything.

Venue

The main venue location is Room G219 in Building B of the VCC Broadway Campus (1155 East Broadway). Building B is the brand new building on campus that faces the north parking lot (on 7th). For those who drive to the campus and park in the lot, just walk through the front entrance and go past the Bookstore and elevators to the back end of the building. G219 is just to the left.

For those who enter the campus from Broadway, please walk all the way to Building B and go to the ground floor of the building. Turn to the back of the building and find G219. Note that the VCC main doors on Broadway Ave are sometimes locked on weekends, and you might have to walk down to 7th Ave. entrance to get in.

The VCC website has a map of the campus location: http://www.vcc.ca/about-vcc/contact-us.cfm

The Magic of Two Rooms

Marketing Room:
This is the "first-point-of-contact" for attendees. All signage and publicity will point attendees to this room. The marketing team will be present to greet and register people. The room will be staged for marketing activities (registration, demos, presentations, sharing information about the group, general information about Ubuntu.) The room will be staffed with people who have a marketing/sales focus. This includes one-on-one demos. Anything more technical than that will occur in the "Tech Room".
Tech Room:
Staged for technical support, and staffed with tech support people to do installations, configurations, troubleshooting, etc. A quieter room, more conducive to thinking and concentration. Lots of power, equipment, tools, and big brains. No marketing hype.

Proposed Flow:
Attendees will be briefly interviewed in the Marketing room by a "triage" person (suggest Mark C.) and the output of that will be a "Support Request" (same forms as last time). "Support Requests" will be brought to the "Tech Room" and posted on the bulletin board by a "runner". In the event that a Support Hero/ine from the Tech Room is available s/he will grab a "Support Request" that looks promising and come over to (or signal) the "Marketing Room" to get the person needing help. The Marketing and Tech Rooms will have 2-way radios (RR) to make this easier.

Room G219
"Marketing Room" The room is a classroom with a reconfigurable U-shaped table setup. The size is 9m x 6m (roughly estimated!). It has:

• chairs for min. 20-25 people,
• around 9 to 10 tables (each big enough for 4 chairs and a workstation),
• an LCD projector with a screen (~1.5sqm),
• 2x2 power points are on the left and right side of the room in a distance of ~2m,
• One ethernet RJ-45 wall plug that does not work on w/e. However the room has wireless internet access using a captive portal. Randall and Stefan have the wifi login info.
• one desk, whiteboards, corkboard

Room G220
"Tech Room" Based on my scouting report (RR) this room is more suited to our "Tech Room". The room is a classroom with a reconfigurable table setup. The size is 9m x 6m (roughly estimated, and roughly the same size as the G219). It has:

• chairs for min. 20-25 people,
• around 9 to 10 tables (each big enough for 4 chairs and a workstation),

• NO LCD projector or AV equipment

• 2x2 power points are on the left and right side of the room in a distance of ~2m,
• One ethernet RJ-45 wall plug that does not work on w/e. However the room is expected to have wireless internet access using a captive portal. Randall and Stefan have the wifi login info. KK will try to set-up the server with two network interfaces and establish wired/wireless routing. (KK can you comment on whether this is done?
• whiteboards, corkboards

ToDo

• (ongoing) Find volunteers in ubuntu-vancouver - RR, ST

• Marketing: meetup.com posting, description, venue, RSVP questions - RR

• Marketing: Create 200 small posters - RR

• Marketing: Poster strategic neighbourhoods and locations - SM, RR, Group

• (deferred) Marketing: Create banner (needs funds) -RR
• (in progress) Marketing: Create 150 stickers - RR
• (in progress) Marketing: Create 10 more signs (20 total) - RR
• (in progress) Marketing: Create 10 more arrows for signs - RR
• (in-progress) Marketing: Nag the ubuntu-vancouver list at least 3 times for RSVP's - RR

• (ongoing) Marketing: Word of mouth - RR & Group

• (ongoing) Marketing: Direct search for people having issues in Vancouver (use Google, Launchpad, Ubuntu forums) - Group
• (needs owner) Create order of events (checklist/flight-check)
• Gather needed equipment (identify who will supply) We may be able to borrow some from Free Geek.
  • KK Request for equipment send to Free Geek for pick up. Requested: (1)16 port switch, (12)network cables(2 long), (1)wireless access point, (4)CRT monitors, (4)keyboards, (4)mice
• Server (KK)
  • Update Ubuntu 9.10 mirror for all 9.10 flavours
  • PXE (network boot server)/TFTP/DHCP/DNS
  • Router to Internet if access required.
  • NFS, Samba, FTP for system backups
• Slide presentation and Compiz Videos

  • (JL) compiled about 65 slides into OpenOffice Impress presentation; demos Ubuntu desktop, compiz, various software and games

  • (JL) obtained a collection of compiz videos (flv, some converted to avi); however videos do not scale well to full-screen, blurry <<-- James can you get some more that have better scaling?

Lessons Learned

Please document any lessons learned from prior support events (e.g. Windowless Wednesdays, install-fests, etc.). We'll use that information to make SupportSaturdays stronger. No need to repeat mistakes.

• What Worked Well?

  • If doing a demo for a group a screen or HUGE monitor works well so that people don't get facedown into a
    • screen and miss stuff that is being demo'd
  • Lots of time to track down and fix problems, do little tweaks, talk about computers, etc.

• What Didn't Work Well?

  • Not matching best helper to each situation
  • Not having a good sense of the issue before trying things
  • Trying to support weird corner cases (strange situations with partitions, Windows multi-boot, etc.) stealing time from other people.
  • Chaos

Equipment List

• Please initial each item you will bring and indicate quantity.

• (qty) laptops (to look things up, to compare, to submit bug reports etc.)
  • ST - will bring my laptop for research.
  • MC - I'll bring my netbook.
  • KK - I'll bring my laptop.
  • IR - I'll bring a Toshiba Satellite 9.10 64bit and a eeePC loaded with UNR9.10 for demos.
    • - A 4x5 Wacom tablet. - 17 inch LCD Monitor - Couple of longer network cables - At least 2 power bars - A D-Link DI-604 Router (4 port)
  • JL - Thinkpad X60 9.10 installed
• (qty) network switch, number of ports

  • Free Geek (KK? are you bringing the FreeGeek stuff?) - 24 port switch

• (qty) network cables (lengths)
  • KK - one 50' ethernet cable.
  • Free Geek - 12 cables, 2 long ones.
• (qty) screens/monitors (for those that bring in desktops/towers) (optional)
  • Free Geek - 4 16" CRT monitors.
• (qty) keyboards (for those that bring in desktops/towers) (optional)
  • Free Geek - 4 USB keyboards
• (qty) mice (for those that bring in desktops/towers) (optional)
  • Free Geek - 4 PS/2 mice
• (qty) power bars

  • ALL - try to bring at least two power bars!

• (qty) extension cords
  • KK - two 30' extension cords
• (qty) (capacity GB) external USB drive (Something to back up peoples' data before hacking at them.)
  • JL - one external USB CD-r/DVD-r drive
  • ML - one external USB CD-rw/DVD-r drive
• (qty) (capacity GB) external firewire drive (Something to back up peoples' data before hacking at them.)
• (qty) (capacity GB) external SATA drive (Something to back up peoples' data before hacking at them.)
• (qty) Ubuntu Server running: NFS, Samba, FTP, and DNS (for repository redirection) services with (size GB) hard drive
  • KK - one 500GB hard drive for backup server
• (qty) extra USB wireless dongles (in case built-in wifi doesn't work for people)

Materials List

• Please initial each item you will bring and indicate quantity.

• 50 x 9.10 Karmic Koala install CD's (to do live-boot testing, and as take aways) - RR
• (qty) colour dry-erase markers for the white board
• (qty) masking tape (for labeling people's equipment)
  • KK - one roll of masking tape
• (qty) pens (for labeling people's equipment)
  • KK black marker for writing labels.
  • I'll bring a set of colored IKEA labeling markers
• 30 x "Powered by Ubuntu" stickers (for new people, or conversions) - RR
• 1 x sign-in sheet on clipboard, so we know who came, and can follow-up if necessary - RR

• A short guide to "getting help with Ubuntu" as a take-away. A few pages of tips printed for easy reference, especially where to get help afterward (i.e. Launchpad, not Google!)... teaching people "How to Fish." (see next section)

A Short Guide to Your Ubuntu Community

Here are some topics to cover:

The goal is to provide concise and well-edited information cards/pamphlets for people as a take-away artifacts. It should stress Vancouver-specific advice, getting involved in the Loco, and community participation. It should be aimed at teaching people "How to Fish", and not aimed at "selling fish."

• Why Ubuntu is different: Community.
• If you have a Question: How to use Launchpad to ask for help from people in Vancouver
• If you think you have a Bug: How to use Launchpad to check and report it
• If you want to learn about Ubuntu in a clear way, without sifting through countless websites?
• What are the (3) definitive sources of Ubuntu information for the new user. (Must be 9.10 Karmic Koala)
• Why it's important to come to meetings
• How to get a real Ubuntu system, preloaded and certified with Ubuntu.
• General recommendations from the "school of Hard Knox"

Questions to Ask "Helpees"

• these are in the meetup.com RSVP questions. We can also do a more detailed survey if necessary . We can (and should) also follow-up directly by email where applicable). If you follow-up, please inform the group so we're not 'peppering' the same person with questions.
  

1. Are you coming for assistance? If so, please tell us briefly what services you need.
2. Please tell us about your computer. What hardware is it? (Make, model, RAM, CPU, disk space)
3. Are you currently running Ubuntu on this hardware? If so, which version?
4. Do you have a recent backup of your personal data? (If not, we highly recommend that you copy all data to an eternal disk. If you need help doing this, please let us know here)
5. Please specify your email address. This will only be used if we need to gather more information in order to prepare to help you.

Dress Rehearsal

There will be a "dress rehearsal" on Thursday Dec 3rd at 6:00pm ??KK, regular meeting place. We'll use that time to test the plan, the equipment, and to ensure we haven't forgot anything.

The Crew

Event Marketing

We have essentially three things going on at the session: 1) A support/install event (the focus) 2) One-on-one demos 3) A slide-show, with light presentation material

Our marketing should consist of poster(s), web postings, and emails.

The first thrust will be to get as many people as possible in the Ubuntu Vancouver Loco signed up for the event (in the spirit of fixing our own group and making it stronger so we can help more people at future events). Randall will email the group at least 3-4 times to encourage everyone to come and get their issues fixed. Scheduled mailings: 26/01, 27/01, 28/01.
Once we've got our own group signed up, we'll shift the entire marketing thrust to the public.
Marketing flyers (camera-ready) have been posted on Meetup (account required). http://files.meetup.com/1411954/support_saturday2.pdf
Please print as many as you can and post them in public places. (Coffee shops, grocery stores, Community centres, libraries, colleges, universities... everywhere that has high visibility!) If you need high volumes, have them printed professionally on coloured paper. It's cheap and an easy way to help out.

Incoming Support Issues

Goals: (a) Grow the Ubuntu Vancouver group and demonstrate success in building community. (b) Help as many people as possible with the highest quality possible. Avoid "try-this-try-that" method of troubleshooting on-site, to maintain credibility and differentiation from other public events. (c) Demonstrate the magic, power, and ethos of Ubuntu to as many people as possible.

Terminology:
"Support Hero": A volunteer who is attending the event to offer assistance or marketing support, and has been part of the planning process.
Requestor: A person that has RSVP'd "yes" for the event and has indicated that they need assistance.
Drop-In: A person that saw our poster and just showed up, or was "dragged in" shown in or flagged down.

Suggested Help Procedure (pre-event):
1) "Support Hero" reaches out to Requestor via email, acknowledging the request and asking the Requestor to quickly scan a list of bug reports, if applicable.
2) Requestor responds with more info. This could be a bug number, or more descriptive information about the issue.
3) "Support Hero" asks Requestor if s/he would be comfortable filing a Launchpad Question. If so, Requestor submits question to: If so, skip to step 5. If not, skip to step 4 below.
4) "Support Hero" submits a Launchpad Question describing the issue on Requestor's behalf.
5) "Support Hero" monitors Launchpad responses to question, and conducts further research.

Suggested Help Procedure (at event):

• Refer to the main SupportSaturdays page. Stefan has some great ideas documented there on how to maintain flow, and how to match the best help to each situation.

This is a collection of the RSVP responses from people who are coming for specific help:

Issue #1: