GNOME User Groups

GNOME Users Groups are organizations of users and/or developers, and are typically local organizations. These groups provide a forum for people with an interest in GNOME and opportunities to network, learn GNOME, get more involved with the GNOME project and community, help each other, and socialize. A GNOME Users Group can be a standalone organization, but can also be a subgroup of a larger group. For example a GNU/Linux Users Group might have a GNOME focused community that could form as a GNOME Users Group.

The GNOME Community encourages you to find a local GNOME Users Group in your area. For example, you can check the GNOME mailing lists to see if there is a GNOME Users Group forum for your region. If not, then consider helping to start one!

GNOME User Group Guidelines

GNOME Users Groups must follow the GNOME User Group Guidelines.

Tips For GNOME User Groups

When wanting to promote/market

• Find out what other groups are doing! Get in contact with them and collaborate on common goals.
• Find out what events are going on and contact the organizers to see if you help or work together.
• Build a network of companies, foundations and people.

• Host a monthly meeting, there are some topics suggested by some GUGs here.

• Find out what companies and organizations near you support or use GNOME. Inform people about how GNOME benefits your community.
• When you have built a network, try to get sponsors for essential props like business cards/t-shirts/posters
• Make contact with local magazines you could write a GNOME related story.
• Localize GNOME press releases and send them to papers/magazines and offer to do a story about it. (when possible)
• Do not ever make promises that you cannot keep (actually quite important)
  • Do not offer to do a magazine story about GNOME when you are not a good writer.
  • Do not offer to give a lecture on GNOME for a technical audience when you are not a technical person.
  • etc...
• Keep it simple
  • When writing an article, write about the most basic elements of the project - our community, our focus on simplicity and usability, find old and new screenshots to remind yourself what has changed.
  • When preparing a talk, do the same. We have a tendency to look to the future all the time, and forget that most people do not know our past or our present.
  • When presenting GNOME, ask yourself if your presentation answers the question "why?" more than "how?" or "what?" - it is important to say what GNOME is (or Ekiga, or GTK+, or whatever) if you are giving a presentation on it, but consider that your audience is more interested in what it allows them to achieve than about the tool itself. Talk about the cool things that GNOME allows you to do.

Perhaps most important:

• join the MarketingTeam mailing list

Upcoming GNOME User Group Events

Check the GNOME Community Calendar for other events - contact DaveNeary to help maintain this calendar, or to add events.

Past GNOME User Group Events

• 7th Fórum GNOME: Brazil, November 2010

• Solutions Linux 2005: Paris, France, 1 - 3 Feb 2005

  • Sebastien Tricaud wrote a report on this event.

• Fosdem 2005: Brussels, Belguim, 26 - 27 Feb 2005

  • There was a large GNOME presence, with Damien Sandras (GnomeMeeting) organising the conference. There were several GNOME specific talks in the Gnome Developers room, and Alexander Larsson spoke in the main conference about Nautilus.

• Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2005: Chemnitz, Germany, 5 - 6 Mar 2005

  • GNOME Germany had a booth. SvenHerzberg gave a GNOME 2.10 talk, ChristianMeyer and MartinGrimme gave a gDesklets talk

• CeBIT 2005: Hannover, Germany, 10 - 16 Mar 2005

• O'Reilly Open Source Convention Portland, Oregon August 1-5, 2005

  • This is the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. One of the more nicer open source conference with quite a different feel than other ones like linuxworld. Much smaller and I guess cozier. We've had a GNOME booth running for two years straight.

• Journées des Logiciels Libres: Lyon, France, 13, 14 Oct 2005

  • GNOME-fr will have a presence at this conference, aimed at spreading free software to the locals.

List Of Existing GNOME User Groups

There are lots of GNOME user groups around the world, who organise events, have fun together and participate in conferences. Find out if there is one near you!

• See also the local press contacts.

• See also GnomeWeb/GnomeSubsites

Please keep them sorted alphabetically -- herzi

GNOME Australia

GNOME Brazil

GNOME Bucharest

GNOME-cat (Catalan-speaking world)

GNOME Chicago

GNOME-cl (Chile)

GNOME-cn (China)

GNOME-cz (Czech Republic)

GNOME Deutschland

see also GnomeDe

GNOME Switzerland

GNOME Greece (Greek language - Greece/Cyprus)

GNOME-fi (Finland)

GNOME-FR (France and french-speaking countries)

see also: GnomeFr

GNOME Hispano (Latin America and Spain)

GNOME India

GNOME Delhi - NCR

GNOME Mumbai

GNOME New Delhi

GNOME Indore

GNOME Pune

GNOME Italy

GNOME-lk (Sri Lanka)

GNOME Korea

GNOME Malaysia

GNOME-nl (Netherlands)

GNOME Pakistan

GNOME Perú

GNOME Poland

GNOME Taiwan

GNOME Thailand

GNOME-Turkey

GNOME-UK (United Kingdom)::

GNOME-MX (Mexico)

comments

• suggestion: sort by continent, have one page for each usergroup with "CategoryUsergroup" on it and have some sentences in english and contact info. Then usergroups should link to their own pages. -- ThiloPfennig 2005-11-22 20:36:57

Updating the list

This is the list of local-related mailing lists in http://mail.gnome.org. Apparently there are more lists than groups here, and there are groups with their own lists not listed here i.e. GNOME Hispano. This is what m.g.o has:

• boston-social discussions of social events in the Boston area
• gnome-ar-list Advocacy, chit-chat and event planning in Argentina
• gnome-au-list Advocacy, chit-chat and event planning in Australia
• gnome-br-list GNOME para brasileiros | GNOME for Brazilians
• gnome-ca-list GNOME Canada
• Gnome-cat-list Llista d'usuaris de GNOME de l'àmbit catalanoparlant.
• gnome-cl-list Advocacy, chit-chat and event planning in Chile
• Gnome-cs-list [no description available]
• gnome-de GNOME in Germany (German translations)
• gnome-fr-list Liste d'utilisateurs en Français (support, discussions, etc.)
  • gnome-fr-board-list GNOME-FR Board list - Liste du conseil d'administration de GNOME-FR
  • gnome-fr-marketing-list Advocacy and event planning in french speaking countries
• gnome-in-list Advocacy, chit-chat and event planning in India
• gnome-ir-list Advocacy, chit-chat and event planning in Iran
• gnome-my-list Advocacy, chit-chat and event planning in Malaysia
• gnome-nl-list Advocacy, chit-chat and event planning in the Netherlands
• gnome-no Liste for GNOME Norge, alle norske GTK og GNOME brukere velkommen
• gnome-se lista för Svensk GNOME översättning
• Gnome-Turk Gnome Turkiye Listesi
• gnome-tw-list GNOME User Group Taiwan
• Gnome-uk-list Mailing list for UK based GNOME Users and Developers

Template Email

The standard way of contacting the GNOME User Groups is through email. Below is a example template used for Google Code In, a contest used to introduce students worldwide to open source development.

Hi, <contact name>! I'm checking on all the Gnome user groups to see what's up and if any of your info is out of date. We have you listed as the main contact of <Gnome Group, and your mailing list located at <Email Address> . Is this all correct? And what have you guys been doing lately: I assume your group is still together.

By the way, I'm <Your Name>, and I'm participating in the Google Code In, which is a program by Google that introduces high-school students to the world of open-source. I apologize if you have already received a similar email, because other students are working as hard as I am.

<Your Name Here>

Note the casual and friendly tone of the email, while keeping it short and concise.

CategoryUsergroup