In my opinion, working with the educational sector is one of the most
important ways to spread the use of OpenOffice in particular, and
open source software generally. As Bernhard suggests, the Marketing
Project is the place to go to discuss this with other like-minded
folks and to find existing marketing and sales collateral.
As a general comment, you'll need to build a relationship with the
decision-makers at your school. I don't think there is a way to get
around the personal contact factor! But, it can be fun to meet people
and discuss issues like this with them.
Another thing that could help is to find like-minded students, and
even form a student organization to promote open source and
OpenOffice. You might start giving out OOo CDs to other students,
posting flyers in public spots on campus, sending your members to
talk to faculty and administrators on campus, and then once you've
built a groundswell, it will be far more likely for the college to go
along with your suggestions.
I am very exciting to hear about your enthusiasm and I wish you success!
-Ben
From: "Daniel Currier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: October 12, 2006 8:02:50 PM EDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [users] I am thinking of trying to talk my local
community college into using OOo
I am presently going to Illinois State University and I tried to get OO
approved for all the computers. However they could not because of some
contract they have with MS. ( I am working to get them to break this
contract- which I feel is an illegal contract- but I have not be to
do this
yet).
However, my old school, Illinois Central College, just implemented OO
on all
their computers. They are also selling the copies to students at the
book
store for cost of the cd (I think $2). I even went down to IT at ICC and
talked to them to see if they had any ideas for ISU and the guy was
helpful
but could not give me much advice.
Here is their web site advertising this implementation:
http://www.icc.edu/technologyServices/techNews_openOffice.asp
Hope this helps..
On 10/12/06, Bernhard Dippold <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Dave,
David Bird schrieb:
> Currently, they use Microsoft Office 2003. I don't know if they
have
taken
> the upgrade to MS Office 2007 into consideration, but I am sure
that it
> will
> be costly. I was really wondering if there were any places
(websites
etc)
> that I could use to try and persuade the college into moving over to
OOo.
>
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Would you mind to subscribe to the main marketing mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
There are the experts probably being able to help you. In the
Marketing
Project (http://marketing.openoffice.org) there are links to marketing
material, perhaps this is helpful, too.
At http://why.openoffice.org we try to give informations why to use
OOo,
even if there are several quite interesting informations the page is
still not really finished yet.
Best regards
Bernhard
