How you can help

How you can help the OpenSolaris Advocacy

The OpenSolaris Advocacy community needs your help - here's a few of the ways that we can think of where you could help out. Of course, this is far from being an exhaustive list, but we're open to suggestions. The goal here, is to get as many people clued-in on OpenSolaris as possible - spread the word !

• Use It
  Pretty obviously, the best thing you can do to help promote OpenSolaris, is to
  use it. Even if you're not a kernel hacker, being able to give feedback to the folks working on the code about new features or bugs will absolutely help our advocacy efforts. Check out some of the OpenSolaris distributions, and perhaps dive in and look at the source code if you're feeling up to it! We want to make it easier for other folks to start using OpenSolaris, so your experience in using the OS would definitely help. Plus of course, by using the OS you'll learn a lot more about OpenSolaris, which has to be a good thing :-)
• Demo it
  So you can use an OpenSolaris-based distribution as your day-to-day desktop (right?), but do you know how to show off the things people can't find in any other operating system ? We'd love to collect together a group of scripts that you could use to demo the features of the OS : if you've got time to write scripts that promote the joys of ZFS, DTrace, Zones or SMF, or any of the other cool stuff in OpenSolaris, then let us know ! Oh, and if you are demoing the OS, make sure to get your audience to bring along blank CDs (and have a few spare yourself) so you can burn copies of your favourite OpenSolaris distro to pass around. Extra brownie points given for net-installing laptops belonging to your audience while they're still in the room !
• Tell your friends
  You're smart, and you know smart people : tell them a bit about OpenSolaris. Ask yourself why you're interested in OpenSolaris, and why it's cool, and then pass on the message. We're going to try to come up with a list of things you might want to talk about, and hopefully some shorter elevator pitches, so if you can talk OpenSolaris till it's coming out of your ears, then we'd love your help in putting these together. Send us mail.
• Tell the press
  It's been said that there's no such thing as bad publicity : we want to keep the press aware of new stuff that's arriving in OpenSolaris, so if you see things that you think might be of interest to other people, then you should tell them about it - share some of your enthusiasm. "The press" could be anyone from Slashdot to the New York Times, to Usenet - talk to those guys, talk on IRC : we want to tell the world !
• Blog
  You may have noticed, we're pretty fond of blogs here at opensolaris.org. If you're writing blog posts about OpenSolaris, then get yourself added to our list of blogs. If you're not writing blog posts about OpenSolaris, then we want to know why - drop a mail to advocacy-discuss@opensolaris.org and tell us !
• Write Articles
  So, now that you're running an OpenSolaris-based distribution, and are blogging about it, demoing it's features to your friends, mailing the press and generally making a lot of noise about it, maybe you want to help newbies out ? While blogs are an excellent way to get the message across, writing articles about OpenSolaris could be a more approachable way to bootstrap new users or developers. Perhaps you've already blogged about some of this stuff ? Well, the bets are, it won't take much to transform your well-crafted blog post into an article we can put up on opensolaris.org so that we can help get your message out ! Just drop us a mail.
• Swag
  You've run, talked, blogged, written and demoed OpenSolaris, but did you know you can also wear it ? We've got online stores at genunix.spreadshirt.net(Europe) or genunix.spreadshirt.com(U.S.) where you can buy all sorts of swag, so you can wear your loyalty on your sleeve, erm, chest - wherever.
• Help the user-groups
  Evangelising OpenSolaris really means getting out to the users and developers : writing blogs and articles, and talking to people about OpenSolaris is great, but perhaps you've got some well-ordered thoughts or presentations that the some of the user-groups would find helpful ? If you've given a talk at any user-group meetings or conferences, then maybe you have mp3s or slides of your talk that could inspire others ? Likewise posters, papers or ideas for talks... Let us know and we'll try to pass them on !
• Other stuff
  There's loads of ways to help market the project : these ones have been relatively sane so far, but there's nothing stopping you skateboarding down steps on an E450 running OpenSolaris, or tattooing the logo to your head. If you do these things (ask your Mom first, okay), please tell us about it and we'll see if we can send you some swag as a thank-you, and if you have any other ideas, just drop us an email !