Re: gEDA-user: Electric clothing and gEDA at NYLUG!

[Ales Hvezda <ahvezda@moria.seul.org>]

[ Ales here, I'm reposting this since majordomo didn't recognize the
  e-mail as being subscribed to the geda-dev/geda-user mailinglist. ]

-- Cut here --
From: Mikey Sklar <sklarm@electric-clothing.com>

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, Ales Hvezda wrote:
> 	Woo! :)  Thanks for the talk report.  It is turning out that
> the MacOSX port of gEDA/gaf and PCB is quite important as well.

OS/X seems to be particularly popular with some of the physical computing
courses offered today through several universities. I can mention one
example that I've seen for myself. NYU has their ITP program which nearly
90% of the students are using OS/X. Physical computing is a required
class for these students to take. Oddly enough the school teaches the
students to use Windows based products for schematic capture, pcb layout,
and all of the microcontroller development.

I would deem this dual os environment unnecessary for the level of work
that is being done. The open source tools would be a very nice replacement
for those who wish to be entirely mac based.

> 	Completely agreed.  So, where else should we advertise?

Three ideas come to mind. 

1) Arrange for gEDA talks at these schools
   - MIT Media Labs 
   - NYU ITP 
   - Parsons School of Design
   - Harvard's Visual and Environment Studies
   - CMU School of Art and Human Computer Interaction Institute 
   - others...

2) Write the first book on "Open Source Physical Computing Tools".

3) gEDA howto articles in monthly zines: 
   - Everyday Practical Electronics
   - Nuts and Volts
   - Linux Journal
   - Wired 
   - etc.

> 	Yes, the debian and redhat packages are very important.  I've
> finding myself also installing more and more things via the automated
> systems rather than installing from source.  

The fink packages too (OS/X users higher level interface to
apt-get/dpkg). Charles Lepple has been doing a fine job trying to keep
these fink packages up to date.

> 	As Karel pointed out, opencollector.org seems to be the only
> central place.  Maybe we should advertise it more as well.  
> Anybody else have some more ideas/comments?  Thanks.

opencollector.org really is has a nice collection of tools, looks
like it too just needs some promotion. I think its time for a book. A
collaborative "Open Source Electronics Howto" might also work.