How many students actually buy a copy of office from the bookstore?
I would think that most students simply buy a copy of office bundled
with whatever brand of computer they first purchase when they start
college. If thats the case then maybe you would better off getting open
office mentioned at orientation as a free alternative to Microsoft
office before the main incentive for using open office is removed.
John Demme wrote:
Last night was the discussion meeting on future evangelism. I'd like
to thank the very few people who showed up despite the cold.
Here's what we've decided to do:
We'll be forming two committees- an Evangelism committee and an
Education Committee.
The Evangelism committee will be in charge of F/OSS and Linux
evangelism. The initial committee will be active for this semester,
all summer, and part of the beginning of the fall 2006 semester. One
of their first acts will be deciding on one or two CDs to be
distributing. We want one to be a CD of F/OSS software for Windows
and another to be a Linux boot CD. The obvious choice for the latter
is Knoppix, but they'll be evaluating multiple options. If both
Windows stuff and the Linux boot CD are available on the same CD, so
be it- easier for us. I'm told (by Anthony) that Ubunutu makes a CD
like this. It was also suggested that this committee coordinate with
the University Helpdesk to distribute F/OSS software- putting links to
applications like Open Office on the applicable Helpdesk pages. It
would also be desirable to get OIT to distribute our official CD en
masse to all of the incoming freshmen in the fall. Lastly, I would
like this committee to, in the early fall (when people are buying
their books and such), arrange to have some one to be at the campus
book store whenever they're open to dissuade people from buying
products like MS Office and instead offer them our F/OSS CD. These
are just some ideas to start with, and the committee will be
responsible for generating more ideas and implementing them.
Next is the Education committee. They'll be responsible for educating
people about F/OSS and Linux. Although this overlaps a bit with the
Evangelism committee's mission, I feel that it's different enough to
warrant a separate committee. One of my biggest pet peeves is when
Professors distribute assignments and necessary material in MS doc
format, considering that anything slightly past text doesn't work in
OO half the time. One of the things the education committee would be
responsible for is educating the entire University faculty/staff (or
whoever will listen) on topics such as this, and alternatives to using
the doc format (such as HTML or PDF). A lecture on closed vs open
standards might be in order.
I am (as of now) looking for people to head each committee and staff
them. If you're interested, please send me an email telling me such.
We also spent some time generating ideas for meetings. The
"Evangelism Trifecta" that we used last semester (Revolution OS, then
Intro to Linux talk the next week, then the Installfest the week
after) will fall under the domain of the Evangelism Committee and
we'll probably do it again this semester. We also thought about
running a series of "howto" tutorials on various topics- Samba intro,
Linux gaming, Xorg, apache, VPN, AFS, iptables, ect... These meetings
would probably fall under the domain of the Education Committee. Ajay
also suggested that we have sort of a "book swap" meeting and/or
website section. He'd like people to post IT/CS books (on to the
website) that they have and are willing to loan out. Also a meeting
where various people talk about what books they've read and would
suggest (especially if they're on Orielly Safari- free for University
people) is a possible meeting.
I have also felt that we haven't had as many presentations at a more
abstract and complex level as of late. I'd like to have more
presentations like Rob's security research talk last semester. For
instance, I'd love to have a talk about how the Linux kernel is
structured and how it works. (Is there anyone here qualified to give
that talk?) Linux as an RTOS and an example of a Linux embedded
device might also be a cool talk. (Anybody for that one?)
I'll be scheduling the next meeting soon with Peter as he'll be giving
a talk on the Campus VPN, and I'll probably add on to his talk with
something on OpenVPN, since it's applicable and I just finished doing
an OpenVPN roll-out.
That's all for now- don't forget to let me know if you're interested
in heading or staffing a committee. I apologize for using the term
"committee" so many times. I cringed every time I typed it.
~John Demme
UMLUG President
