On 4/12/06, Matt Oquist <moquist@xxxxxxxxx> 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
