Interested in starting and maintaining a GNOME user group (GUG) in your area? GNOME foundation will support you!

Hello all Brave boys and Smart Girls out there!

GNOME is a cool free desktop we all love and its always looking for smart, energetic and enthusiastic volunteers who can help in spreading word about it in various parts of the world! There is a big list of already existing GNOME User Groups but its still too small for what we have envisioned to achieve!

GNOME provides you support in your endeavor by providing you domain and monitory assistance in carrying out GNOME activities.

These links will help you kick-start and show the leader in you-

•  The official GNOME user groups page: https://live.gnome.org/UserGroups
•  Subscribe to the GUG-masters list to get yourself a helping hand and begin setting your base: http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gugmasters-list
•  You may use presentation on "Building a GNOME User Group"(from here) by Pockey Lam for helpful tips to getting started.

 I hope this quick list of ideas may also help you plan out your actions-

• You should create a mailing-list on GNOME infrastructure for keeping people updated about the latest advancements and mass mailing all round the year.
• Make a cool list of topics that you'll be covering at each get together and plan a theme or basic idea for each meet-up. You can get ideas from here.
• You can also at times, invite an established FOSS identity which might not necessarily be part of GNOME and can get cool ideas to implement in GNOME from him or her.
• You can definitely slowly incorporate hack-fests and documentation-fests as theme ideas provided you find people capable to take part in those.
• Initially you may need to train a bunch of volunteers who can take care of introducing GNOME and GUG to large groups of people. They should better be clear, confident and convincing.
• You will also need a group of technically trained people(or train them) who can identify and train potential contributors.
• Do something that people can take back home with wellness in mind. Definitely keep some computers on which people can experience GNOME and maybe distribute a free GNOME3 CD to each member in the first get together and note their first response and suggestions to improve GNOME.
• Keep in mind that part of the group is to involve new users and contributors and most of them might be having no idea of what GNOME is all about so you and your volunteers need to be patient in  handling them.
• Celebrate GNOME Events :D
• Never forget the GNOME Code of Conduct.

Rock on!