Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] Want to present at LINUXWORLD NY/ 2002?]

[Harry McGregor <micros@azstarnet.com>]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, zeruch [Joseph Estevao Arruda] wrote:

> As far as a delay with IDG Jessica, you and I can deal with that (seeing
> as VA has a fairly good relationship with IDG - cornerstone sponsorship
> has its priviledges).  The idea I was dorking around with was based on
> my observations of the first one you put on:

I guess I don't really know how much that would help.  We were not
successful at getting anything Education related at the upcoming LWE San
Fran, including the panel discussion.  Considering the time/date of the
panel in NYC the attendance was quite good.

After a fair amount of pestering from myself, and emails from
Mandrakesoft, LWE agreed to offer us a BOF session.

Heck, you have to realize that until recently the linux world expo website
was run on Win2K and IIS 5.

> 1. It was so grass-roots and ideological, that a lot of the pragmatic
> reasoning that would have appealed to business folks was not covered.
> 2. No case study like material (i.e. University level projects involvong
> things that have more broad applications - i.e. collaboration sw like
> Sourceforge, PHPGroupware, etc. and things like
> clustering/bioinformatics.  You know, how do research departments gather
> most bang for limited buck and what functional benefits do they glean
> from either a hybrid or fully OSS environment).

The proposal I submited to LWE for San Fran (and did not even recive
offical word on, until I asked them, though they were supposed to email
everyone who submited a paper at the end of april) was a case study on the
project at Corbett Elementary School, including a cost breakdown,
benifits, select examples on implimentation, and the impact on students.

Corbett, in part due to the GNU/Linux based technology focus was just
named National School Library Media Program of the year, by the American
Library Association.

> 3. The panelists did not gel well.  But then again, this is always a
> crapshoot no matter where you are - I was amazed when I arranged
> Guntharp and Horms to be on a panel with Bruce Perens at an HP
> conference that did not involve severe slinging of mud ;)
> I would look at getting someone that manages an OSS heavy environment in
> a research lab at a University or even a professor (i.e. someone who
> teaches a compiler course and focuses on GCC or a DB course that uses
> PostgrSQL)

I guess I have had a diffent impression of the panel in NYC, I think it
did very well.

> While the elementary and HS stuff is cool and can be mentioned, *most*
> of it is not applicable to the majority of the demographic attending.

Linux/Unix is quite ingraned at the University level, many people expect
to see it, etc.  Not many people know about the use, benifits and cost
savings of it in the K-12 level.  I would even venture to say that most of
the people involved in SEUl/edu are concerned about the K12 level, and
have a feeling that the university level is handling itself.

> If it still doesn't work for LWCE NY there is always ALS.

I will be resubmiting my paper for LWCE NY as well.  It's really too late
for LWE San Fran as I have not finished the paper (nor will I until I
recive acceptace of the outline at one of the confernces, it's just not
woth my time right now).

Dealing with the LWE staff has not been that great of an experince.  I
emailed about their webserver, no responce, emailed about the paper, took
over a month to get a responce (and only after Chris, formerly with
Mandrake emailed them as well), I asked about the panel discussion, no
responce, and their responce on site when a fork lift drove thru our booth
at LWE NYC was nothing to write home about either.

			Harry
> z

--
Harry McGregor, CEO, Co-Founder
Hmcgregor@osef.org, (520) 661-7875 (CELL)
Open Source Education Foundation, http://www.osef.org