I think it would be good to try cooperative learning online in the evenings and possibly weekends. The idea is that everyone would join an IRC channel at a suitable time with virtual machine software configured and try out new FOSS software at the same time and exchange ideas about it via IRC. It would be fairly informal and people could come and go as they wish, the session would probably go from something like 6PM to midnight and anyone could just take a break for dinner etc whenever they feel like it. I've got some under-utilised KVM servers that I could use to provide test VMs for network software. The general idea would be for two broad categories of sessions, ones where an expert provides a training session (assigning tasks to students and providing suggestions when they get stuck) and ones where the coordinator has no particular expertise and everyone just learns together (like "let's all download a random BSD unix and see how it compares to Linux"). As this would be IRC based there would be no impediment for people from other regions being involved (hi Rick) apart from the fact that it might start at 1AM their time (sorry Rick). Rick, if you want to run a session then 9AM on a Saturday or Sunday would be a reasonable start time for people here that might be OK for you. While the aims of this would mostly be things that relate to LUV (IE Linux and *BSD) I would be happy to coordinate a session on ReactOS as well. I'm thinking of running training sessions on etbemon, DNS, Postfix, BTRFS, ZFS (maybe with Craig), and SE Linux. I'm thinking of coordinating learning sessions about DragonflyBSD (particularly HAMMER2), ReactOS, Haiku, and Ceph. If people are interested in DragonflyBSD then we should do that one first as in a week or so I'll probably have learned what I want to learn and moved on (but not become enough of an expert to run a training session). I'm also interested in volunteers to run training sessions or coordinate learning sessions. There are some skilled members of this list who never turn up to meetings, hopefully some of them will be interested. Note that the topic doesn't have to be something that interests me, all we need is a trainer/coordinater and a group of people who want to learn. So the issues to be discussed are: 1) What communication method to use? IRC? What server? 2) What time/date for the first session? 3) What topic for the first session? DragonflyBSD? 4) Do we try and make this a mostly-LUV thing or just open it to the world? I wouldn't block random people who want to join, but I also wouldn't necessarily advertise it where people who aren't LUV members would see it. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/