[CREATE] open source | open hearts

[Gregory Pittman]

This rather cheesy subject line is my lead-in to an idea that came up in 
my head earlier today.

There may be insufficient time to implement this in Montreal, but the 
idea is that, rather than just being a bunch of geeks that breeze in and 
breeze out of town, leaving money in our wake, we might find a way each 
year to connect to the community where LGM takes place.

Is there some volunteer task we might do one evening while at LGM that 
makes some kind of connection with the host city and its community? A 
simple one might be helping out in some setting such as a place for the 
homeless. A less simple one might be some volunteer effort that in some 
way connects to the expertise of attendees in computers, technology, 
graphics.

What does this do for us?
An important question. For attendees it offers a way to at least briefly 
immerse ourselves in some aspect of the environment where LGM takes 
place, makes us a bit less "outlandish" both from our perspective and 
those in the host city.

It offers some notoriety, something that sets LGM apart from other 
tech-oriented conferences. We might find ways to participate in some 
fund-raising as a means to simply hand over some amount of money to some 
group, but I think that personal involvement says a lot more than the 
dollars would, and even those who cannot contribute money can give their 
time. It wouldn't hurt for other open source conferences to follow our lead.

So I'd like to see if this resonates with anyone else.

Greg