In brief, we agreed that if momentum in Scandinavia is to be maintained we need to keep on pushing and collaborating. "We" here means the various Nordic projects, SV, NO, DA, FI. All have varied levels of FOSS adoption and interest. Stockholm may be moving to try out OpenOffice.org, and Finland may be fairly advanced in adopting and developing FOSS, and there are individual successes, but Denmark and Norway are more often struggling under the yoke of at best bureaucratic and corporate indifference to FOSS and at worse short- sighted adherence to MS's pocketbook and illusory ease of use. By working together, I am convinced we can get things to change.
So, here are some suggestions (apologies for the note-like quality):* Create a regional Nordic user/developer/promotion group; include NO, SV, DA, FI, possibly. The idea is to promote development and use and to work by strength in numbers. We need to coordinate with Sun, IBM, others. I met with an IBM representative (two) and they expressed interest in this, too, in the sense of contributing in some way. Of course interest is not the same as doing....
* Schools: work with profs and students, esp. in colleges to get them using and developing OOo; build curricula, etc. The newly proposed Education project can help here, but we really need to be aggressive in bringing students in as developers, not just in teaching them how to use OOo.
* interneships. The idea was raised of meritorious students getting internships to study at Hamburg or even simply study OOo à la Google Summer of Code. I mentioned this idea to Peter Lange of Sun, and he responded positively. I have to follow up on it, but if the Hamburg developers are agreeable, it should work, and not just for Danish students.
* Extensions. There is a lot of interest in Laurent Godard's Extensions project. In part b/c the economy of ancillary projects is well-developed; one cannot edit MS' source for Office but can create extensions. So... focus on nimbus of infrastructure for extenions development; again, not specific to DA or Nordic regions but again, important. Again, this can be done per NLC project.
* Local to the Danish project: Greenland/Faroe localizations: aboriginal languages. I need contacts in the Greenland government, I daresay, to get this going. It could also work with Canadian aboriginal drives. After all, incredible as it may seem, Canada and Denmark share a border and cultures, at least among the aboriginals ;-) Along these lines, I've initiated some correspondence (several exchanges) with researchers working on codifying aboriginal languages in Canada and the US but especially Canada. One person in particular was very interested but I need to follow up. The idea is that OOo should be there for all. We have no North American (or South) aboriginal tongues speaking for OpenOffice.org. That's got to change.
Søren also created a wiki focused on DA issues. It would be useful, perhaps for other projects to follow suit....
See http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Da.openoffice.org Best, Louis
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