On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 23:37 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:

> Florian has suggested some specific targets. Let's narrow it even  
> further. My preference is education 

Just a bit of a tangent but might be of interest. Here is a message I
got from a head of IT in a school this morning.

"I will be starting unit 3 of the gold ingot this week...  we do not
have open office, however we have just installed office 2007. I was
thinking of getting pupils to create guides for specific 2007 software
that could be used by primary schools to get them selves up tp speed.
What do you think?"

My reply explained how to get OOo and why it would be better for
students educationally to make comparisons of OOo and MSO for use by
primary schools. His reply

"this is great, could you recommend any other standalone peices of open
source software that could be easily installed on the network."

So I think that can be chalked up as a win. Point is we have a reason
for them to install OOo even if they have just installed MSO 2007 :-)

Its taken some time but things are starting to take off and we have more
than 40 schools paying INGOT academy subscriptions now and about 20 more
in the immediate pipeline. UK government accreditation has made a
massive difference. Shuttleworth project is going well in South Africa
but that will take a bit longer because they are starting from further
back and are currently going through the procedures for government
approval. I have a bigger prospect that could finance us across Eastern
Europe but even without it we should be able to focus the business
entirely on INGOTs by the new year so the resources committed will
increase and hopefully keep increasing.

If you want a resource for teaching about open standards I have produced
a Moodle course at
http://theingots.org/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=true&id=30

As with all things on the INGOT site its creative commons licensed so
you can use it, improve it etc. When I get more time I'll add to these
things and eventually we will also get community contributions too. 

> but others have reasonably  
> suggested business.

So maybe concentrating the money on business would be best as we have at
least something for education that is self-financing and should grow
over time.

>  In that case, let's specify SOHO and SMB and thus  
> have three sets of ads (content) and destinations (where they'll  
> run). I'll meanwhile also ask my Sun colleagues to come up with  
> prices of the standard ones, as well as some education ones.
> 
> By no means does targeting sites exclude grassroots campaigns!

Understood, more diversity is better.

Ian
-- 
New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications
www.theINGOTs.org

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