Cullowhee
The Western Carolina University Linux Users' Group (WCU-GNU/LUG) will be assembling a team and collecting materials for this years' Software Freedom Day (http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/) event during the Valleyballywhoo (http://admissions.wcu.edu/tour/index.html) Celebration slated for the 23rd of August and then an additonal event for the official SFD on September 10th. With a student body of over 6,000 students, along with parents, families, faculty and staff in attendance we will make a definate impression and lasting presence of open source on our campus and into the surrounding communities across our region.
We intend to have wireless internet access with stations running various distrubutions including Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/), Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/) ( Pentoo (http://www.pentoo.ch/) ), SuSe (http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/), and serveral dual boot machines (SuSe/XP (http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/) and MEPIS/XP (http://www.mepis.org/) machines, along with a live cd dual boot with SLAX (http://slax.linux-live.org/) and Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org/)). We'll be handing out sample live cds on demand, copies of Ubuntu 5.0.4 (x86, AMD64, and Mac versions available), and copies of TheOpenCD 3.0 project (http://www.theopencd.org/)(which has open source software for Windows based machines as well).
All our equipment will be running off of inverters as a line source of power is unavailable in the center of the bell tower (http://cowee.wcu.edu/uccam/index.html) area we'll be stationed at (have a battery you'd like to donate?). If power constraints permit we hope to fire up a projector after sunset to show off linux and open source software on a big screen to draw some attention. Our station will be beside the American Chemical Society Student Affiliates (http://membership.acs.org/W/WCA/WCStudentaff.htm), so we'll be also show casing open source livecds with science applications such as DNALinux (http://www.dnalinux.com/) with BLAST (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Education/BLASTinfo/information3.html) and KnoSciences (http://gistlabs.homelinux.net/Knosciences/index.html) with Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) and Chemtool (http://ruby.chemie.uni-freiburg.de/~martin/chemtool/chemtool.html). Look for the banner and ballons!
We have 10 members that will be manning our station with rotation in and out of the crowd for better exposure and interaction. The WCU campus is located in beautiful western North Carolina and directions (http://www.wcu.edu/directions.html) to our campus are easy to follow.
Individuals, groups, and companies wishing to support this endevour are requested to send email (mailto:sfd.wcu.lug AT gmail.com) for additional information. We are in need of donations of monies and materials; advertisement for sponsorship is possible.
Update:
WOW! SFD-Cullowhee was awesome if I do say so my self! One down 2 more to go. The August 23rd event handed out over 300 cds of free open source materials. Many thanks to Tech Support on Call, the Free Software Foundation and Ubuntu for their donation of materials. Some pictures of the event can be found here (http://www.webmnt.net).
Our next events will be on the 10th of September. We have solidified one location in Hendersonville, North Carolina, USA ... and are working quickly to confirm the second. Now for that next batch of supplies!