national OSS-ed summit & barnstorming

[Jon maddog Hall]

Hello,

There are (at least) two methods of attacking any computer audience:

Horizontally and Vertically

Horizontally means going to "computer" trade shows and events like
Linuxworld, the old Comdex, MACWorld, etc.  You write for blogs that are
oriented toward computers, magazines that are oriented toward computers, etc.
The further away from your core technology you are, the harder it is to get
recognized, but the easier it is to reach the "unwashed".

Vertically means going to events like EDUCAUSE and speaking with those
educational types that make policies for Universities, or attending any of
the educational conferences that go on.

You can find out more about EDUCAUSE at http://www.educause.edu/

For the past thirteen years I have been going around and speaking about FOSS
in a horizontal method, but which often heavily included education.  I was a
former college professor for eight years (3.5 full time, and 4.5 part time),
so I understand what FOSS would mean to education and research.  The problem
is that from a horizontal perspective, there is so much about FOSS that it is
impossible to talk about all of it in a 45 minute "keynote".  Therefore often
the educational part of FOSS takes a back seat to government and commerce.

Lately I have been purposely requesting that the conference people that
pay my travel expenses (note, I do not often require an honorarium for my
speaking, and never ask for one from Universities) to also line up speaking
sessions at local Universities.  This happened in Oman recently, and I addressed
the CS staff of the University of Oman (their ONLY public university) for
about an hour on the benefits of FOSS in teaching.  In a tour of their labs
I showed them how they could teach two more effective courses using FOSS.  I
think my speech had a deep impact on their thought processes.  They are currently
completely a Microsoft shop other than one professor who is "FOSS".

But again, this is only one university.

Unfortunately to attack something like EDUCAUSE it takes almost a full time
(or at least half-time) job.  Their membership is only made up of
academic institutions and corporations in the "educational domain".
Microsoft is a member (Platinum) and Novell is a member (Bronze).  EDUCAUSE has
no individual memberships.

EDUCAUSE has an "Open Source" panel at their upcoming conference in Washington
D.C. (which overlaps with Linuxworld Canada, where I will be), but no listing
of who is on the panel.

And that is just EDUCAUSE.   There are many other "Educational" events,
magazines and groups in the world.

>That's a good example.  We need something like Linux (in schools)
>International.

Well, it actually should be "FOSS (in schools) International". :-)

There is a third method of reaching the audience that you are talking about
and one that I am executing with  Linux International.  That is of the "grass
roots" method.  Don't catch fish, but teach thousands of people how to fish.
LI will have a "Special Interest Group" devoted to Education.  With LI as the
"corporate umbrella" they will have access to groups like EDUCAUSE as well as
others.  LI will supply them with the materials necessary to convince people
at all levels of education that FOSS is better than closed source, proprietary
code.

I note, by the way, that your email list is "fedora-education-list at redhat.com"
This is a recipe for failure.  It is the same philosophy that killed Unix.
It should be "FOSS-education-list", or better yet
"FOSS-education-list at some-neutral-body". That way groups from Novell, Ubuntu,
Debian, Slackware and others can join you.

Grow the pie, then cut it up.

Warmest regards,

maddog
-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director           Linux International(R)
email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St. 
Voice: +1.603.672.4557       Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association

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