Hey there you Chicagoans! It is that time where we gather our little Mafia of Linux hackers and brand new users and jam out. We were just discussing this on IRC and had a few ideas that I would like to run past the rest of you, and maybe get some input from you as well. One thing we have learned over the past 4 years is that it is tough running any type of event in Chicago on a Friday or Sunday, unless of course there is free beer available. And even in some cases, the free beer didn’t even help out. Another thing we realized is that when we do an event, we typically pick a 4 to 6 hour time frame, which works well for some cases. Now for the Global Bug Jam last year, or this year, can’t remember but I do remember it was snowing, we hacked all day long and into the night and people loved it. We even got Nathan Handler out of his hacker shell to come hang out for a bit. We are thinking maybe we should do the same. Run it one day, most likely Saturday, and run it all day long. This way here we can get people in and out at different times, hoping to accommodate as many people as possible.

So with that said, we are looking for a venue, in which I hope my homeskillet Kevin hooks us up with some space, as he does have the bomb office space. It would rock if we could get a sponsor or two to maybe cater a bit of food or snacks and some drinks, preferably of the caffenated variety, though some beer wouldn’t hurt. We think maybe a 10am to 6pm or later deal would be cool. Maybe a Noon to whenever we leave type deal. What kind of ideas would you have about the event?

As for what we would like to do, if we could get enough people, the options are endless. There will be a core developer, some MOTU members, documentation team members, bug triagers, new users, old user, young people, old people…You get the idea. With this type of group we could do some packaging how-to, bug triaging, documentation stuff, general Ubuntu/Linux use, and then some. Though seeing as it is getting close to the freeze point for Karmic, it would be nice to fix some bugs, do some hacking. The real idea is just to get everyone to hang out and be geeks for an entire day. If you just want to show up to see how silly Jim Campbell really looks in real life, that is cool, though be warned, he is a rockstar!

Let us know what you think. Respond in the comments, talk to us on IRC in #ubuntu-chicago on Freenode, send an email to our mailing list (ubuntu dash us dash chicago at lists period ubuntu period com). Thanks!