GOSCON report
Sri, Sorry you could not get to Portland for GOSCON. I learned a lot and left very optimistic about the future. The Government Open Source Conference was organized by Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSUOSL.) It was attended by about 200 State CIOs and public sector IT Managers from 17 States including Virginia, New Mexico, Idaho, California, Washington, Montana, Utah, New York, South Carolina, as well as the country of Argentina. Since I was the only speaker on the desktop and several speakers covered return on investment and licensing issues in depth, I talked about two subjects: *implementation of the GNOME Desktop in Sao Paolo telecenters, the Itaipu power plant and Extremadura/Andalucia with references to Macedonia and Largo. *working with the community (mailing lists, maintainers) The feedback I received was positive, if cautious. One attorney in the front row of my talk said she had no idea that these desktop deployments were taking place around the world. One of the other speakers was Linda Hamel, general counsel of the Information Technology Division for the commonwealth of Massachusetts, who covered licensing and the state's recent adoption of OpenDocument format http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office. Those of you who were at GUADEC in Kristiansand may have attended the roundtables on open standards conducted by Bob Stack, who was CTO of Massachusetts. It was clear at GOSCON that agencies in other states will follow the lead of my home state Massachusetts. One thing that impressed me was to hear officials speak about the Cathedral and the Bazaar. They were also looking to customize software in a way that would be useful not only to their own state agency, but could be shared with like agencies in other states. The savings gained in software costs by a human services department, for example, can go back into the core services provided by that agency. Having spent time working with governments in other countries over the last few years, it was encouraging to see the first steps of adoption now taking place in the U.S. tim -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GOSCON report
Tim: Which of the speakers did you find most interesting? Were there any state CIOs as speakers and Who stood out (among state CIOs) in terms of conviction, logic and also had their Return on Investment Calculations? Thanks, Rajiv On Tue, 2005-10-25 at 19:55 -0400, Tim Ney wrote: Sri, Sorry you could not get to Portland for GOSCON. I learned a lot and left very optimistic about the future. The Government Open Source Conference was organized by Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSUOSL.) It was attended by about 200 State CIOs and public sector IT Managers from 17 States including Virginia, New Mexico, Idaho, California, Washington, Montana, Utah, New York, South Carolina, as well as the country of Argentina. Since I was the only speaker on the desktop and several speakers covered return on investment and licensing issues in depth, I talked about two subjects: *implementation of the GNOME Desktop in Sao Paolo telecenters, the Itaipu power plant and Extremadura/Andalucia with references to Macedonia and Largo. *working with the community (mailing lists, maintainers) The feedback I received was positive, if cautious. One attorney in the front row of my talk said she had no idea that these desktop deployments were taking place around the world. One of the other speakers was Linda Hamel, general counsel of the Information Technology Division for the commonwealth of Massachusetts, who covered licensing and the state's recent adoption of OpenDocument format http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office. Those of you who were at GUADEC in Kristiansand may have attended the roundtables on open standards conducted by Bob Stack, who was CTO of Massachusetts. It was clear at GOSCON that agencies in other states will follow the lead of my home state Massachusetts. One thing that impressed me was to hear officials speak about the Cathedral and the Bazaar. They were also looking to customize software in a way that would be useful not only to their own state agency, but could be shared with like agencies in other states. The savings gained in software costs by a human services department, for example, can go back into the core services provided by that agency. Having spent time working with governments in other countries over the last few years, it was encouraging to see the first steps of adoption now taking place in the U.S. tim -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: GOSCON report
On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 07:55:40PM -0400, Tim Ney wrote: Sri, Sorry you could not get to Portland for GOSCON. I learned a lot and left very optimistic about the future. Yes, I was somewhat disapointed, but I had some items at work I had to take care of. I would have loved to have chipped in. The Government Open Source Conference was organized by Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSUOSL.) It was attended by about 200 State CIOs and public sector IT Managers from 17 States including Virginia, New Mexico, Idaho, California, Washington, Montana, Utah, New York, South Carolina, as well as the country of Argentina. Oregon is probably one of the most open source friendly states we have. It was the first to try to spin up an open source bill that I know about. Schools in the area have actively been switching over to linux as desktop. I think I know at least one person who worked in the school district. GNOME thin clients could make an excellent entry in the educational space. The feedback I received was positive, if cautious. One attorney in the front row of my talk said she had no idea that these desktop deployments were taking place around the world. Heh. Desktops are gaining awareness if not popularity in at least other countries. I would have mentioned portland school district and Mayor Tom Potter of Portland runs a linux desktop. (not gnome, but kde, but it's alright.. nothing says he can't flip flop later. :-) It was clear at GOSCON that agencies in other states will follow the lead of my home state Massachusetts. One thing that impressed me Thats interesting news. Did you get any good contacts that we would be able to approach to provide say livecds or live demonstrations? I could help if you have Oregon contacts. Thanks for giving us your impressions from GOSCON. It was enlightening. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
