Good point Will, I agree. Focus on how you can solve real-world problems at your company at with clients rather than focusing on the how's and why's of open source and commercial software.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Will Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 3:48 AM Subject: Re: [brlug-general] Open Source Presentation... Your input is needed. > 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 > >
