Last night after going to the B several of us ended up in the parking lot chatting about a variety of things including classic video game emulation, microsoft bashing, and creating a WLUG series of videos. Last night, it seemed like a great idea to make some kind of linux based show and distribute those videos for free (over the internet, possible on VCD as well).
free downloads online... charge a few bucks for the VCD's. btw, the best emulated game is samurai showdown... *sigh*.. love that one...
There were several ideas, including a social commentary (ala "geeks in space" http://www.thesync.com/geeks/), a tech-help show answering emails (http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/), and instructional videos (just think of that comercial for the windows videos... "Just like a VCR, pop the cd into the computer, hit play, and learn").
geeky social commentary is boring much like sports commentary...i'd rather watch the game than 2 or 3 guys sittin' there talkin' 'bout 'what i think is/should be happening'. :-) tech-help will only get you into trouble. 'hey guys! watched/listened to/bought your video... and the part where you set up the SCSI watchamacallit? and i did it at home and there was this smoke and... ?!@#...' instructional is the healthy choice.. as a lot of people (including myself) get lost in the maze of stuff that is a distribution. what i think would be extra cool is to have 'biased' instructional videos/presentations. one might be how to set up postfix on debian... maybe the next would be setting up apache on freebsd. now it's a variety show. :-D and lest we forget, who are these videos aiming at anyway? admins? programmers? cazh' users like me? would be kinda neat of you split up 15-20 minutes into 3 segments... maybe 5 minutes for 'tips & tricks' for n00bs, 5 for hardcore programming/scripting, and 5 for admin/security... something like that. lol, 'short attention span linux theater' ... call it s.p.l.a.t. heh... why only 15-20 minutes? well... what more do you need? how much time/money are you willing to spend, and you want people to want more... yes? don't be afraid to let your audience hang a little. if they wanted more info/advice, they could always hit the list. plug plug plug... put subliminal mailing list messages in it or something. besides, you want to guide them... not read the whole sendmail compendium to them. i like the fact that most websites give you the 'generic' version of set-ups and then sorta leaves you wanting more so you go and try and break stuff on your own. teaches you a lot... and, if you get really stuck, hit the mailing list.
Personally, I like the last idea best since it really can provide value for the community (as opposed to providing entertainment).
We had also thought that a shorter 15-minute
there's that french guy in that linux magazine. he's valuable and entertaining. he's got some nifty tips about new software and he has some decent tutorials. can't think of his name... style video would be a
great way to start. Personally, I'm in favor of "What is linux, and why is it good for you".
So I guess the questions are, do people think
(as opposed to an idea made after consuming too much beer). Would people be willing to help? What resources can
open up that question... what is gnu/linux? and just maybe an added extra cool something would be to interview a real company/person who uses it all over the place. real world examples. kinda like 'national geographic explores the land of *nix... today our travels take us to joe smith's web corp where they have a 1,000 node server farm that uses redhat... blah blah blah...'. would be cool to see these animals in their environment and what they're doing with gnu/linux and/or open/net/freebsd's. this is still a good idea people donate to a
project like this?
i've always thought it was a neat idea. computers are fun to play with dammit. i need to teach my grandmother not to be afraid of them (no, i'm not kidding) and if i could show her a cool video, she would be impressed and i would make her the geek i want her to be. i'm being 100% completely serious. plus, it would give me a good excuse to go hang out with her which would make us both happy. she always hooks me up with chinese food. :-D the most i can offer is 2-4 hours a week and my trusty crappy HP and it's oh so used cd-burner. and btw, 'Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.' - Benjamin Franklin "Rock over London, rock on, Chicago!" - Wesley Willis -jeff