The Cochise Linux User Group, CLUG, in conjunction with the Ubuntu Arizona Local Community Team, AZLOCO, conducted an Installation Festival on Saturday, 20 January at the University of Arizona South, Sierra Vista campus who was our gracious sponsor. Sixteen people attended the event which resulted in Xubuntu being installed on a personal computer and Xubuntu being installed on a Chromebook using Crouton. In addition Group members assisted three individuals who had questions or problems with their Linux sysytems.

PREPERATIONS:

• Coordination was done with Dr. John DeLalla, Director of Continuing Education at the University of Arizona South for use of space in the Learning Resource Center roughly three months in advance of the event.

• Publicizing the event started approximately one month before the event and took the form of flyers that were posted in various locations around town and the Education Center on Fort Huachuca, posting a notice in the Cochise Trading Post, posting a notice on the Sierra Vista Herald/Review’s on line web site (http://www.svherald.com/calendar/#/) , contacting David Rookhuyzen from the Sierra Vista Herald/Review via email david.rookhuyzen@myheraldreview.com, and sending copies of the flyer to the CLUG mailing list for distribution to their friends and neighbors and at their places of employment and worship.

• Hardware for the event was on hand from previous Installfests that was donated by various members of the CLUG and AZLOCO . All of the hardware was checked prior to the event by Rex Bouwense for proper fuctioning.

• Installation media in the form of, DVDs and USB thumb drives, was on hand from previous installfests.

• Ubuntu SWAG was passed out at the event. Items included Ubuntu lanyards, install disks, stickers, and pins.

• Flyers with information about the AZLOCO and CLUG missions, activities, and event dates as well as Free an Open Source Equivalents to proprietary software applications were distributed to individuals at the event.

• We limited our installation ISOs to Ubuntu or Ubuntu “flavors” and Linux Mint (the two most popular and user friendly Linux Distributions) unlike other AZLOCO Installfests where you can have any Linux operating system installed on your computer.

• Name tags were created for attending members by Rex Bouwense to identify them as installers and members of CLUG.

• A post installation check list was on hand for members to go over with the owner of the computer to show them exactly how their new Operating System works – how to update the system, create and save a document, play music and videos, activate the installed firewall, etc.

• A spare monitor, keyboard, power cable, and mouse was on hand in case they were needed which they were not.

LESSONS LEARNED:

• Continue to stress that customers must back up any data that they want to keep because it may be lost during a dual boot install and will be lost during a whole disk install. This was not a problem with guests at this Installfest but we will continue to stress this requirement to prevent it from becoming a problem.

• Continue to conduct training for our members on installation procedures, dual boot and whole disk install. Especially how to free up a partition and enlarge it in a Windows environment.

• The use of a welcoming station worked well once again especially since we moved to a separate greeter. Continue to use a separate greeter to allow the event coordinator to concentrate on problems with the installfest or problem installations.

• Even though we continue to broadened our publicity we were not satisfied with the turnout. Continue to seek new ways to publicize the event.

• Once again the University’s wired Internet seemed to recycle itself off every 30 minutes or so. After checking with the IT personnel at the US South, they were not sure why this occurred. All of the hardware and the CAT-5 cables had been checked before the event and were in perfect working order.

• Continue to look for new locations to hold this event to reach new and perhaps a different audience. The next three installfests will be conducted at the Sierra Vista public library Mona Bishop room. There is no wired Internet there.

• Consider changing the time of the event or reducing the number of hours of operation to 4. ( such as 1000 to 1400 or 1100 to 1500)

• Because of the lack of installs conducted our installers gradually left until we were down to only two at the very end of the event. This could have been a problem if we had an influx of people at the end of the event.