I live in Alabama US, and I noticed we don’t have a lot of users originating from around here or the southern US area in general. It’s possible people just don’t know about Haiku, I know there’s a couple user groups around here for Linux/FOSS and general tech, would promoting Haiku at these things be a good idea? After all, more users = more enthusiasm and a bigger Haiku community worldwide
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There are Linux user groups (LUGs) and Python, too. So why not Haiku?
Perhaps I could introduce Haiku to “my” Linux user group. Don’t know if they will like Haiku. But currently I avoid the LUG because of Covid-19.
Greetings
Peer
Back in the days there were several BeOS User Groups, heck I (and a friend of mine) did one for Belgium (BeBUG), would be nice to have the same again 
To the OP: On second thought I guess that you can’t found a Haiku UG in the Alabama area! Because you said there aren’t many users. And UGs are a local thing.
But maybe you can ask your local Linux UG if anyone is interested.
And perhaps there is some computer convention in your part of the world. You could do a demo there.
Greetings
Peter
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the user groups of that time have died out, because ultimately everyone came together on the official site and only communicated there. Due to the lack of users, the user groups gradually became fewer. a common user group has grown around the official site. This is something other systems don’t have, we are united.
maybe even the better way?
Well this is moreso about promoting Haiku rather than making local groups, like I said, we can create a better community by spreading awareness and therefore make a better Haiku.
That’s always a good idea, but probably not every linux community will allow haiku because haiku doesn’t have a linux kernel.
Our french users present haiku at fosdem and in the past there used to be an annual event called BeGeistert (The Last 2018 Hamburg/Germany).
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Yeah, in general there’s a couple just general tech groups around my area that are affiliated with the Linux groups, so that would be a starting point. I did notice that a lot of the promotion for Haiku is mainly European areas, so it would be nice if I could promote it more to users around the southern US and possibly even further. Maybe we could get some people here to spread it even further around the world, there are FOSS conferences everywhere and they’re finally starting to be physical again rather than strictly online (Akademy is in Barcelona this year for example).
I don’t think anyone will stop you. any help is welcome. Everyone can help in their own way to make haiku more popular and presenter.
In the past i made an overview of how to support haiku.
The original is a pdf file with links to the individual pages.
Unfortunately not as well integrated as hoped, placed on our knowledge base:
BeSly — Haisly
Making Youtube/Peertube videos could help showing that Haiku is already a well-functioning and beautiful system.
Edit: Do we already have Haiku events (conventions or whatever) somewhere on the globe?
Edit 2: I found a list of many Haiku events in the past:
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a future list.
Greetings
Peter
User Groups
I used to be actively involved in a Commodore user group in Iowa. I was quite active on the Amiga. Our activities didn’t save Commodore from mismanagement within the company from folding it and running it into the dirt. While user groups allow people to help each other with problems that can be solved locally, most of the real tech problems in the industry originate at the top and involve technical debt. Most user groups have been replaced by forums like this one and online searches.
FOSS Conferences
A FOSS conference would be a good place for a Haiku booth though. If you do that, just make sure to emphasize that, even in beta form, a small operating system can run faster than a big one due to cache characteristics. Be sure to read the type of crowd too. Trying to set up a booth comes at a cost and if there isn’t likely to be a good reception for the type of presentation you’re putting on is going to cost also.
My Past Experiences at Amiga Conferences Promoting Amiga Alternatives
I’ve been to Amiga conferences in the past and seen technologies for Commodrore 64 series machines there. It’s amazing what people can plug in to that little 8-bit cartridge slot to make a C64 last longer. Likewise, Amiga computers had socketed connectors all over their motherboards that have been used to replace custom chips and CPUs with modern FPGAs and CPLDs. The Vampire prototype that I demoed in my Amiga500 speeded up things a hundred times over. Some things two-hundred times over.
That said, the booths I set up and sat at were more popular for the Vampire than for the MorphOS and AROS booths I sat at during Amiwest in Sacremento, CA. The crowd there was more purist next-generation Amiga oriented around AmigaOS 4.x than for the alternatives. The Vampire was running AmigaOS 3.x but still was at least running on Amiga chipset hardware. The modern Apollo-core “Vampire Standalone” models would probably see a cold reception too because the chips are all emulated and it runs ApolloOS instead of the original AmigaOS 3.x series. ApolloOS is an AROS fork, after all. Read the crowd when you set up a booth and know what the emphasis will be at the conference.
Unfortunately, you like the tiny fonts too much!
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In the past demo’d BeOS at a fairly large computer fair in the Netherlands organized by Computer Totaal.
Did some local presentations for it with a powerpoint in local computer clubs in Belgium (heck even for a Amiga User Group (yes they still exist in Belgium) )
EDIT That computer fair was “HCC dagen”, and I was part of the HCC group here in Belgium back then (those user groups all died silently also).
We are not dead at all, just quietly waiting for a new beta to show!
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I would love to see more people doing some Haiku advertising at conferences.
We do it in France and a bit of Europe with oco and mmu_man, but we can’t do it worldwide with just all 3 of us
It doesn’t really need a lot: we have a tablecloth with the Haiku logo and some computers we run Haiku on. Sometimes I also print some stickers to distribute.
Typically we domonstrate things like extended attributes, the package management system, maybe show a few apps running.
We also do talks where we, for example, go through the news in Haiku that happened during the year. That is reasonably easy to set up. Sometimes we do talks on more specific topics as well.
I don’t know if it has a great effect on attracting more users or developers, but it at least let people know that we exist and that the project is still active.
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Yes, that’s important because some people think Haiku is a useless toy in alpha state. But that’s wrong, of course.
I normally don’t visit computer conventions or conferences. I guess Fosdem would have been a good opportunity.
I think we would attract many people by showing applications running on Haiku.
Especially games, but office and internet, too. Or whatever (painting and more).
(For example the Mail program is rather primitive in design. But that’s a posititive thing! Think of the featuritis of Linux mail programs.)
Greetings
Peter
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We have beam, a very good mail app, but it need some updates.
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Also show Ancestris, a (already) ingenious genealogy software (Java, OpenJDK) from French hand and widely used in France!
They already have their own booth and their own talks at most of the conferences we visit here
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