Re: Spreading the word (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] Want to present at LINUXWORLD NY/2002?])

["zeruch [Joseph Estevao Arruda]" <z@valinux.com>]

Douglas Loss wrote:
ur organization focuses on educational applications for
> Linux below university level.  I don't know how we would cater
> to businesses--try to convince them there's money to be made in
> putting Linux into the schools?  _That'd_ be a hard sell!
> There's not much money to be made in educational consulting in
> _any_form.

That is not true. The edu consulting business is a niche, but a
lucrative one for the oligarchy of players on the scene.  At least two
had come to VA looking for expertise in doing large scale projects for
school districts (one for an entire state at the secondary level).  So
it's there, but it is still a business/industry orientation. Those magic
buzzwords like 'solutions' and return on investment still apply.

> It's true, but it's also a task for some other organization.  As
> I say, we focus on below-university-level education.  If we try
> to do everything, we'll end up doing nothing well.

Well, I would agree with this, but I was thinking more along the lines
of using it to stick a wedge in and then drill down.

> > Pick the battle, pick the venue, state your case.  The rest is
> > a free t-shirt ;)
> >
> I agree with you, Joe.  I'm just coming to believe that these
> venues aren't the best ones for us to spend our limited
> resources on.  I think we should be attending educational
> conferences, rather than commerce-driven Linux ones.

And that may very well be true.  The Linux conferences do one thing
though...visibility on a grand (at least for odd cvalues of *grand*)
scale.

>  The
> trouble is, I don't know which conferences would be the best to
> attend, what it would take in time and finances to attend them,
> and what kind of presentations would work best for them. 

Best 2 krona I can provide:

1. make a small set of packaged/canned presentations with varying
focuses (i.e. language learning, student/faculty collaboration, basic
skills, etc.)  Make sure they are pithy and visual (most
administrarors/executives, etc, deal with ideograms and short sentences
tahn white papers, and they are the ones that usually sign the checks
and/or ask their techs to investigate "this rather interesting set of
tolls I saw at X conference")

2. Find folks to present them at a set of regional conferences (I would
wager that regionals would be a better hit than mondo-sized cons)

3. Update, repeat and enjoy.

There is more to discuss, but I'll let people flame me a little first ;)

z

> For
> anyone on the list: if you have answers to any or all of these
> questions, post them here!  We want to get our message out to
> the decision-makers in the schools, not just our fellow Linux
> users.
> 
> --
> Doug Loss           Advertisements contain the only truths
> dloss@suscom.net    to be relied on in a newspaper.
> (570) 326-3987             Mark Twain

-- 
Joseph Estevao Arruda	|	www.valinux.com	
Corporate Alchemist	|	www.sourceforge.net	
VA Linux Systems	|	www.linux.com
z at valinux dot com	| 	www.enlightenment.org
+1.510.683.6730		|	www.osdn.com