As the holiday season comes upon us, many think about those who are a bit less fortunate than us. I am no different in this category and feel like I would like to do something to help those who need a hand. This year, I plan to help the Electroregeneration Society (http://electroregeneration.org/) by heading down there for our inaugural “ERGS/UTOS Holiday Linux Installfest”.
I hope this might interest a few of you as well. And if so, please consider coming down anytime and donating your time. Here’s the details:
Location: Electroregeneration Society Warehouse (555 S 400 W, Salt Lake City, UT) (map: http://sn.im/ergs-map)
Date: December 19, 2009
Time: 9am-5pm (Installfest starts at 10am)
What can I bring?
We’ll be setting up the equipment at 9am. ERGS has power strips, etherrnet switches, computers and monitors. If you have Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE install media (CD or DVDs are what we need), bring them with you. Please also bring your laptops so we can look up settings and the like if needed. I’ll be bringing my laptop with a tethered phone too, just in case we’re overwhelming the internets there.
Please come on down and donate your time, here’s a bit of a spiel from Dave Turnbull, one of the many volunteers at ERGS:
The Electroregeneration Society enriches lives through affordable access to technology by repurposing electronics, supporting technology education, and developing community partnerships.”
We primarily serve two groups — charities and low-income families or individuals. We provide computers to 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations without regard to mission — all nonprofits qualify. For individuals and families, we have a service-for-equipment program, where they provide 15 hours of service to ERGS in exchange for a desktop computer.
The Utah Open Source Foundation’s goals align with the Electroregeneration Society’s goals because we’ll be installing Linux on machines that will be repurposed. Sometimes, the machines are a
bit older, Linux is the only simple way these machines will be able to be repurposed.
If you have a few hours on Saturday, December 19, consider coming down and donating a bit of your time for a good cause and help us install Linux on as many machines as possible. I will be there with my family. I sure hope you can come as well. It’s going to be a blast while helping the community get connected to the world :)
See you all there,
Clint Savage
Utah Open Source Foundation
