Team, I've just added Stathis as first Greece ambassador to our list of ambassadors at http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Ambassadors_list Please give him a warm welcome! You've seen some emails from him already on the list and I hope that the short interview below gives some additional background on Statis! Andreas ************************************************************************************************** * What have you done already for openSUSE? First of all, I run a group of people in GreekLUG (http://www.greeklug.gr) were we promote openSUSE when we have an event. Until now, I use copies of disks but I would like in the future to have more promotional items. I also organized the release party for 11.3 in Athens, although I live in Thessaloniki (500km away). I wrote couple of HOWTO in Greek (check How To/Tutorials http://forum.greeklug.gr). I'm responsible for openSUSE in GreekLUG. * What are your plans for promoting openSUSE? We plan to organize a release party for 11.3 in my city too, maybe next week. We have planned a presentation for 11.3 arround October. We plan to participate on Software Freedom Day. We plan to participate on Infosystem, the computer International Fair in my city (3000-5000 people will stop buy, so when the time will come, I'll ask the procedure for promotional items). We plan to make a small magazine for the tech news, I'll write articles and news about openSUSE. I use we because I want to organize the group of people here and when they'll feel ready they apply as ambassadors as well. I want them and new users to learn what I know about openSUSE and "re-produce" myself. * Are you ready to start promoting openSUSE I already promote openSUSE and as I mentioned above, I planned couple of events. When I have them ready, I'll write on the list and wiki event list (I think I saw there's one). Maybe I need to promote openSUSE officially. * What do you think is the best kept secret of openSUSE? The development procedure. Although I don't have much experience (compared to others), it seems to me that the community works for the development more than other distro. * Why do you love to do this? I found openSUSE as one of the top distro with great support from the community. As I mentioned above, I'm member of a panhellenic NGO (Non Goverment Organization/Non profit society), the biggest in Greece, Ifound the opportunity I was looking for to make openSUSE on the same level that ubuntu and fedora are in Greece. As member of the NGO, I had the opportunity to discuss about it with Richard M Stallman during his visit. * How did you start with with Linux/openSUSE? What is your level of experience? I'm fresh user. I learnt about GNU/Linux where I was testing the SUSE 6. I was in school and I found it kind of difficult. I didn't test other distros. 3 years ago I had problems with my computer and I installed kubuntu and the problem was gone. So I passed though many distros. Now I use openSUSE, PCLinuxOS and Fedora at the LUG and openSUSE (KDE) at home. I'm not experienced user since my major is Veterinary Medicine. I think I know very good the basic functions of Linux (installations, basic terminal commands etc). My friends think I know more than basics since I was working installing and setting servers LAMP/Samba/Proxy for some projects I participate at GreekLUG such as medical program OpenEMR, Moodle. I also participate on make a remaster distro for education (I know openSUSE have Li-f-e). We make a dristro for a musical university (they asked us special programs) and also we'll try to adjust Greek goverment's educational software (don't know when we'll have it ready. Hopefully for next school year). *The ambassador program is currently pretty informal and we expect the ambassadors to organize themselves. So, please coordinate with other ambassadors on the opensuse-marketing mailing list. Sure. I need some help from experienced ambassadors. Is there someone you point me to contact? Since I send it to the list, is there someone who can help me organizing, since I'm new? * Also, as an ambassador, you're the expert on your country/region, so please share on the opensuse-marketing mailing list a bit about the openSUSE and the FOSS community in your country/region, e.g. what are their needs. In my country, there are plenty of communities. The ideal community to me would be someone that will have a presence (web site, magazine) with the news of the local community and news around the world. Also help from list and forum in local language since there are plenty of people that cannot speak or if they do, they don't know the terms. Maybe an IRC channel or place to have real chat. That way they can have some problems solved real time or organize the community for future events. Finally the community must have a presence to all events (seminars, special days, install fests or presentations to show the world the FOSS ideas). In my country, Ubuntu-gr is the one that has almost all the above and Fedora has some of them. I'm not 100% sure (since I never searched), there are forums of Mandriva and Mint. Personally I think we need all distros and communities to be strong and work together for a good reason, to make the world think different. Use WE and not I would be ideal for this reason. I would like to thank Andreas Jaeger for his help. Regards to all, Stathis ----------------------------------------- -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126