On 4/12/06, Matt Oquist <moquist(a)majen.net> wrote:
I'm still mulling over the national summit idea.
> While having strong regional networks of open source supporters is
> vital, I think a few nationally barnstorming evangelists would make
> a big difference, too.
How does one become a "barnstorming evangelist"? I'm already an
evangelist, but I know my barnstorming needs work... Seriously, I'd
love to see something like this happening but I don't know how to
manufacture it. [Inter]National speaker-types seem mostly to spring
up on their own, by writing and speaking well, getting invited to more
and more engagements, etc.
Since more of the folks who work the ed-tech conference circuit have
blogs now, I'm a bit more conscious of the whole process, just the
fact that this time of year there's a pretty big ed-tech conference
going on somewhere at any given time, and a handful of folks who seem
to speak at all of them. For a few of these folks, it appears to be a
career in itself. But generally, yes, this goes along with writing
some books and/or shilling for your or someone else's company.
Unfortunately, we have no education specific books to sell (am I
forgetting something?), and I don't think there is an open source in
ed-tech startup that is successful enough to allow its founder to
spend most of the year galivanting around the country.
Perhaps a more plausible plan is wooing some of the people who already
have the keynote/pundit gigs locked in. David Thornburg is actually
doing pretty much straight-up Linux advocacy in his talks now. Does
anyone know him personally? David Warlick installed Ubuntu on his
daughter's computer today...
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2006/04/11/jumped-off-the-cliff-in-freefall/
I've copied maddog since I'm guessing he's not on this
list, so maybe
he can chime in with ideas about building such a team of evangelists.
That's a good example. We need something like Linux (in schools) International.
--Tom