You should try to cite as many references as possible. That will increase the credibility of your presentation.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ryan McCain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 11:05 AM Subject: Re: [brlug-general] Open Source Presentation... Your input is needed. Thanks for that response.. Very insightful. I'm taking the angle of not trying to push OSS down their throat, rather, I'll say here is where we can start: DNS Servers, Print/File Servers, DHCP Servers, Web Servers, etc. If I went in there with the attitide that OSS is a perfect fit for any and everything, I'd get laughed out of the room. Thanks again, Ryan -------------------------------------- Ryan McCain Northrop Grumman Corporation Linux System Administrator 3 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 225.219.0556 Fax: 225.219.0540 Registered Linux User #364609 >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/05 3:48 AM >>> It hurts me to say this. The stories behind free software are very entertaining and I love reading and talking about them. I'm afraid your audience is not looking for that much entertainment. Spend no more than five minutes on history and theory. For theory, emphasize peer review and the free market principle that competition breeds excellence. Peer review is something people with advanced degrees in highly technical companies understand and believe in. For history, emphasize the long line of excellent results or "products" BSD, sendmail, apache, postgress, mysql, and how successful they are in both market penetration and survival in hostile and high profile target environments. You will want to say that the cause of success is fundamental and transferable to projects you know are excellent which have yet to prove themselves by widespread adoption. It is important to lay this foundation but you don't want to spend more than "executive summary" time on it. I would not waste too much time on the failure of commercial software. Your audience is aware but has been brainwashed to think that the flaws of commercial software are universal. Rather than recount the awful statistics of desktop compromise, for example, tell them how free software avoids such things by proper user / privilege separation, easy access to updated software and fixes and good diversification and control of software installed. It's better to offer solutions than it is to rub salt in a wound. Free software adoption at this point is moving like a freight train and there's where the meat of your talk should be. You should be able to find some real TCO numbers out there by now and they should be impressive. You should know what your company does and how a mix of proven free applications will do it for you better than what you have now. You may want to push less proven but mature applications that you know are excellent as extra benefits of going free. Practice a few times and your presentation should be great. Good luck. > > Here's the sections I have in mind..... > > -History of Open Source > -The Open Source Community > -Why Open Source works > -Who uses Open Source > -Example Open Source applications > -Open Source vs. Commercial > -Where we can use Open Source internally > -Where we can use Open Source with customers > -Where do we go from here???? > -Conclusion, Q/A > > ... Thoughts/Suggestions? > > I'll have an hour with the CIO, CTO, CFO, proposal artchitect, etc. of the > 100,000+ person company I work for to get them started with open source, > so > I need to make sure this goes off golden. _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net
