Re: Linux International General Developer's Fund: Request

[Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>]

I'm all for this ...

>>>>> "J" == Jon 'maddog' Hall, Executive Director, Linux International <maddog@valinux.com> writes:

    J> Of course it takes time to develop and give a talk, but for
    J> someone who knows the information and how to organize and
    J> present it, it takes only a short time to do that effort.  

This could use some mentoring; I have been slowly edging myself into
this arena just because I love to talk about it and I seem to be
giving the same OSS evangelist spiel over and over to crowds of two or
three when I travel, and putting them all into one room at one time
just seems more efficient, and leaves more time to actually do real
work.  It's also why I took on some writing, speaking at small LUG
meetings and doing the RadioWallStreet shows.

My trouble is not having a lot of experience in this. I haven't been
in cubicle land for almost a decade and get to precious few shows (not
many happen in my rural wilderness) so I'm largely making it up as I
go. I keep hoping for feedback after I give a talk but people just say
"oh it was great" and leave it at that.  It's frustrating.  

Others may also have something to say but are similarly inexperienced
in the art of public speaking and I wonder if there is any way we can
"grow" more public speakers.

(when I grow up, I want to speak smooth and personal like Bob Young,
but I fear I just don't have the salesman gene that makes it happen ;)

As a total aside ...

    J> He was loaned a laptop to allow him to show his slides, and he
    J> bought nationwide Internet access so he could keep in touch.  

<PLUG CLASS="SHAMELESS"> 
    Next time, go to my site and take out a free dialup account for
    them; we have ports in over 1200 cities across north america and
    the service is very friendly to Linux.  No ads, no spam, just a
    requirement to visit the portal page as your first stop.
</PLUG>

An exchange program seems like an excellent idea.  Linux is a unique
opportunity to tear down walls between countries and I'd love to see
some of the members of the SNDP "Public Software" group (the successor
to Linux-without-borders) on the speaking tours.

    J> What would be great would be a Linux Documentation Speaker's
    J> Bureau, something along the lines of the one that SSC set up
    J> under

    J> http://www2.linuxjournal.com/cgi-bin/frames.pl/lr-toc.html

The difficulty is evaluating the speakers -- we can list everyone but
it may have ill effects if we 'sell' a conference on a speaker who
turns out to be a total bore, clueless or worse, like me who keeps
forgetting where he is in his presentation (I need to perfect the art
of "taking a moment" ;).

I have a similar problem recruiting authors.  Anyone is welcome to
write for the LDP, and we take most anyone as a paid tech reviewer,
but for a commercial book, a writer, unless they are a celebrity,
needs to be good at it or they get disappointing royalties, and that
wastes the author's time.  

Looking at the LJ list, I can't imagine sifting through that to take
anyone except the cele
Maybe it is our common duty to keep a watch at conferences to spot
newcomers who are especially good at public speaking.  Those who know
me know I'm not a big fan of 'certifications' but maybe what we want
(and also my concept of tech certification) is to build a "better
business bureau" where those who have hired the speaker can rate them
non-anonymously so we can track reputations by previous references. 

-- 
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@linux.ca>: office voice/fax: 01 519 4222723
TCI - Business Innovations through Open Source : http://www.teledyn.com
Canadian Co-ordinators for Bynari International : http://ca.bynari.net/
Free Internet for a Free O/S? - http://www.teledyn.com/products/FreeWWW/



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