Flossie Conference is a great idea but :- 1. I'd love to come but it's difficult to make a day trip to London from Llanelli / Carmarthen and get there before 11.00 a.m., especially if you don't have you own transport. 2. Most of the people you want to influence are in school management and, in my experience, either not in the least bit interested in OSS or downright hostile. Most also have an extremely limited understanding of ICT - either limited to M$ or to whatever the LEA demonstrates to them. 3. Schools are going to require a mixture of operating systems and hardware - pushing OSS alone is not going to work BUT OSS in conjunction with different os's will be a convincing argument eg: X11 / OpenOffice.org on Apple, Linux / Openoffice.org on Intel and Windows / OpenOffice.org on Intel - demonstrates the cross platform operation of OSS systems and, the fact that files are freely transferable from one os version to another. However, you will have to acknowledge that there are areas where Windows is going to be required - particulary in the area of Design & Technology for instance. 4. You really need to host two / three of these events, one in each of the three major regions (England, Scotland & Wales) - Ireland may be more difficult. If you could host them in schools so much the better. I could probably swing such a venue right here with a little effort. 5. Push very hard the 'inclusive' aspect of OSS - you don't need the latest versions of software to do your work. OSS is not exclusive, it does not require a great deal of expenditure on the part of the parent BUT NO / OR VERY FEW parents are going to use software that the school doesn't (I'm one exception to this rule - as of January my children will be working purely on Mac OS/X and Linux at home). In fact our Head as already pointed out to me that she's getting tired of justifying to parents our continued use of Lotus Smartsuite rather than MS Office. What you will probably end up with is a conference of technicians / system admins etc who already understand the issues and know the superiority of OSS solutions but can't get management / teaching staff to show any interest at all. All the teachers want is an easy life, it doesn't matter to them that most kids are running illegal software or, that there's a massive underground market in such things. it's not even that they are downloading illegal software from the Internet - they're just 'borrowing' their friends CD's. Perhaps a way forward here (prepares to be flamed out of existence) is that we begin to report such occurences to M$ because, and I have to be honest about this, there is no justifiable reason anymore for running illegal software, and, that we report not just pupils, but also members of staff. maybe this would help all concerned to see the true cost of not running OSS operating systems and applications. As an alternative thought, I'm organising a small of team of year 8 & 9 pupils who have entered the Celtic Enterprises Competition (www.celticenterprises.org) - we're about two months behind the other teams for various reasons (mainly late start) but, they are intent on producing Javascipt based applications for use in primary and secondary schools using OSS development methods. Some samples of their work to date can be found on www.freewebs.com/ccookbook/eduscripts/index.html - have a look and let me know of any comments that you may have. At present, we have several 'Maths' applications under development, some 'Writing frames' applications for English and a general purpose quiz / revision testing application. Please bear in mind that these pupils are learning to use javascript 'on the fly' and, that all development is being undertaken using Apple iBooks with FireBird being used as the browser of choice. The intention is to produce a CD for circulation to each school in our LEA containing our applications and the FireBird browser for all three major os'es. Perhaps this is another way forward..... just some thought for you all.... Alan :-) (Time to go and put flame proof suit on) On Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003, at 18:25 Europe/London, John Ingleby wrote:

I believe there are 3 registrations so far; the conference needs 50 delegates to run, so just *47 more* will make it happen. We're aiming for at least 100, but there's capacity for 400. This conference is a fantastic opportunity to save money across UK schools, and get more *real* IT into the hands of pupils and teachers.

To register, download the booking form *now* from the link at www.schoolforge.org.uk/flossie/conference200402.html or send an email to yvonne@thelearningmachine.co.uk

Don't miss it!

John Ingleby ************

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 16:55, ian wrote:

...

Sorry to bring this up again, but recruitment is not going particularly well. I don't want to have to cancel and it might just be that people intending to come are just waiting to book nearer the time. If you are in this category, please E-mail me and let me know so I have some idea of the possible attendance. If you are not going to attend for a specific reason eg delegate fee, date or whatever, that would be useful information too. Also if you can spread the word around through as many of your contacts, mailing lists etc as possible. If we can't get enough interest to run an annual conference its not going to make much impression on the powers that be that there is a growing interest in FLOSS in schools!

Regards, -- ian

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Suggest that a more targeted approach may be needed....draw up a list of names/schools/govt depts/suppliers etc and ring them, send christmas cards and email them until you get a reply...share out this load across all the trusted members of this list...having organised a an earlier session with Richard Stallman at DFID on OSS I know how difficult it is to gain peoples interest and commitment......tempus fugit -----Original Message----- From: Colin McQueen [mailto:cmcqueen@mcqueen.uk.net] Sent: 17 December 2003 20:52 To: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Re: Flossie again ian wrote:

Sorry to bring this up again, but recruitment is not going particularly well.

I've just received a support email from Capita and it has the FLOSSIE details on it!! :) -- Colin McQueen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com