Site Goals
Hi everyone,
I wish I could put more time into this announcement, to explain the hows whats whys etc. The short of it is that I've started a new community for GPL'd software users and developers with a specific focus on the Newburyport, MA area. (Of course it *is* a virtual community, so you can participate from anywhere.) Eventually, as the community grows, I would like to have local User Group meetings in Newburyport too. (The public library is a fantastic facility.)
The main focus of my effort is to create a 'living' (always updated), searchable, cross-linked, organized knowledge base (using a wiki) of the people, and the companies using Free Software in this area. Of course that also means writing about the software and the solutions that people use. I would like to see both the 'simple' things like 'using a scanner', 'setting up a network printer', to the more complex like 'software development on a Linux workstation', 'creating an Extranet with Free Software' to 'Point of Sale systems and Accounting'. There is a wealth of knowledge in the archives of this list; my intent with the website is to provide a better way to capture the information for sharing, re-use and reference. I don't know about you, but I get tired of tracking down the knowledge that I wrote down somewhere, read once a while back on the list, or Googling for answers.
I really think the people who make up the Free Software community are its biggest assets, but they go unrecognized and are under-appreciated. To reinforce the 'people' aspect, I want to install a customized photo Gallery, but that effort has not yet begun.
I have launched a website: http://www.nbptgnus.org. The website is based on the wiki software that runs wikipedia.org, so it should be robust. I hope that you will join me there.
Thanks,
--freephile 09:44, 22 Aug 2004 (EDT)
