Pamphleteers
An often overlooked but vital staple of literary history are the pamphleteers, they produced short documents on their political and social opinions and distributed them to anyone who was interested - these people were instrumental in many of the changing ages of history, attaining much prominence during the turbulent Elizabethan and Victorian eras for example - although we live in quite a different age we can still follow their example.
To help forward open source as a pamphleteer you can take two paths, the simplest being to find essays and leaflets explaining some aspect of open and make sure that people in your community see them, this might mean printing out a dozen to display on your shops counter top or a hundred to distribute among local establishments, you could even walk door to door distributing them in your village or town -or of course you could simply link people to them online. The important thing is that you're sharing the message, that you're spreading the information and giving people the chance to learn about it.
Perhaps the more obvious, but mildly harder, option is to find things which need to be talked about, which need to be known and understood by the world and then sitting down and creating a document which attempts to explain and introduce those things. This you can then share with others who are looking for something to distribute or distribute yourselves in fitting locations.
But if the whole process seems a bit daunting then don't worry, the great thing about openness is it allows for and thrives on collaboration - either find someone to work with who has complementary skills or locate a semi-finished or 2nd rate pamphlet with a CC licence somewhere online and upgrade it to suit your needs. -any graphic designers or stylists might for example fancy reduxing my pitiful attempts posted below...
To help forward open source as a pamphleteer you can take two paths, the simplest being to find essays and leaflets explaining some aspect of open and make sure that people in your community see them, this might mean printing out a dozen to display on your shops counter top or a hundred to distribute among local establishments, you could even walk door to door distributing them in your village or town -or of course you could simply link people to them online. The important thing is that you're sharing the message, that you're spreading the information and giving people the chance to learn about it.
Perhaps the more obvious, but mildly harder, option is to find things which need to be talked about, which need to be known and understood by the world and then sitting down and creating a document which attempts to explain and introduce those things. This you can then share with others who are looking for something to distribute or distribute yourselves in fitting locations.
But if the whole process seems a bit daunting then don't worry, the great thing about openness is it allows for and thrives on collaboration - either find someone to work with who has complementary skills or locate a semi-finished or 2nd rate pamphlet with a CC licence somewhere online and upgrade it to suit your needs. -any graphic designers or stylists might for example fancy reduxing my pitiful attempts posted below...
What pamphlets should you share?
Your choice of message of course must depend on what you believe in and your selected target audience, this means deciding what people most need and want to hear about - a good introduction to open source is of course always going to be offering people information about the range of free software and media which they can instantly start using at no cost. As well as projects which offer instant personal reward people tend to like learning about inspiring projects such as open source ecology which are interesting for many reasons, none the less due to the audacious scale of the operation and the vast implications their project could have on poverty stricken communities around the world.
If you can locate an audience for information and provide them with a good and inspiring way to access that information then you're helping both that project and those people, who knows maybe one of those people will one day pass it onto a friend with similar interests then that friend will tell another friend about it and maybe that friend will even be so interested enough that they start distributing leaflets about it themselves, or make the next breakthrough.
If you can locate an audience for information and provide them with a good and inspiring way to access that information then you're helping both that project and those people, who knows maybe one of those people will one day pass it onto a friend with similar interests then that friend will tell another friend about it and maybe that friend will even be so interested enough that they start distributing leaflets about it themselves, or make the next breakthrough.