Jamaica Linux Users Group meeting.

I missed the first part of this because Neal was on the dock early,
and a bunch of folks headed over there before I arrived. A small group
of us showed up around 08:45, and Theodore Ts'o and I found ourselves
wandering aimlessly trying to figure out what had happened and where
we should go. Fortunately I managed to pull "The Ruins" out of my
head, and so we walked the 7 minutes or so to the meeting.

I walked in to hear a fairly standard marketing speech by the local
IBM guy, praising Linux and explaining how wonderful it was. Sounded
like preaching to the choir to me. 

After, I talked briefly with the Head Guy in Charge of the Jamaican
Linux Users Group, and handed him the keychain PDA still in its
blister pack which I'd brought over to give away. I hope he finds some
good use for it.  He was Donavon Campbell,
donavon.campbell@digitalaccesscom.com. 

I also talked to a Peace Corps volunteer who was involved in digital
access/education on Jamaica. He said that the Peace Corps was getting
more heavily into Information Technology transfer. Local
infrastructure is pretty daunting -- T3s are available but are
fabulously expensive, and a 'permanent' IP address (actually a
guaranteed lease) is $700 a month. He's trying to persuade folks that
hosting their own websites is a good idea, but so far it's an uphill
fight. Most folks here are dial-up, but he said that they'd applied
for a telephone line 2 months ago and still didn't have it
provisioned.

Poverty and wealth are pretty much cheek by jowl here. We were in a
very nice restaurant with a waterfall and water pool hard by the
banquet room, but this guy's girl friend was working in a row of
houses which has no plumbing, where each house is just large enough to
contain a bed and the sewage periodically floods in.  Construction
workers here just move in to the construction site; most people squat
on their land and real-estate transfers are extremely tricky.

The Jamaican Linux Users Group here is about 3 years old and still
pretty small. I got the impression they don't have regular speakers
or meetings.