Hello,
I am a member of the board of the Berlin Linux User Group (BeLUG, a non- commercial association). About a year ago I had an idea for a new kind of Linux event which should be targeted at people who don't know Linux yet and which should be very easy to organize. It is called the "Linux Presentation Day" – not very German but we intended from the beginning to expand this beyond Germany after some time. Here is an English summary:
http://www.linux-presentation-day.org/
On May, 9th 2015 we had the first event, limited to Berlin at eight locations. The second event (the first outside Berlin but also organized by BeLUG) was on November, 14th. 79 locations in 72 cities in three countries participated; the event had 1500 visitors (due to an unexpected lack of media coverage). Two new Linux User Groups have been founded.
Now we have started to look for organizations abroad for our next event as the main goal of the event is to make it so big that we reach a new level of media coverage. We were more than surprised when we were told that the Italians have been doing something very similar for 15 years...!
Is there something similar in France already?
We are looking for a few organizations (LUGs, similar associations, companies, schools, universities, ...) which are interested in such an event and might participate in the LPD 2016.1 and use their experience from that for organizing it as a nationwide event for LPD 2016.2.
http://www.linux-presentation-day.org/call-for/2016.1/
The date for the next event (LPD 2016.1) is April, 30th (Saturday). The date for 2016.2 will probably be the Italian date (October, 22th).
The Italians have announced to participate in LPD 2016.1. The nationwide Dutch LUG is interested in participating, two British cities are, too. And more countries have been and will be addressed. The aim is to have a Europe-wide event soon and a worldwide event within a few years.
And a technical remark concerning your mailing list: I have sent one subscription email to you but immediately got two different confirmation emails from you...
CU
Hauke