[seul-edu] Seminars and organizer's perceptions

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

I've been talking to the organizers of LinuxCanada about the seminar on
advocating ports of commercial software, and something has become clear to me.  These
folks are very nice, but it's obvious that they don't quite understand what Linux
is about.  They didn't know where to put this seminar, in their technical track
or their business track.  I explained that as I saw it, it should go in their
Linux advocacy track.  That puzzled them.  They didn't realize that there was a
strong impetus toward convincing others of the usefullness of Linux among the
Linux community, and so didn't have any place to put such a seminar.

I then asked who they thought the audience for this seminar would be.  They
think it will be people from software companies who are considering porting to
Linux.  I agreed to change to direction of the seminar to describing the porting
tools and methods that can be used to convert Windows and Macintosh programs to
Linux versions.  I'm trying to convince CodeWeavers (a Minneapolis, MN firm that
does such conversions with Twine), ARDI (an Albuquerque, NM firm that has tools
for converting Mac programs), and Loki (we all know who they are) to attend and
take part in this seminar with me.  So far, ARDI looks like they will, and
CodeWeavers seems possible.  Loki hasn't responded yet.  I also contacted Weston
Pawlowski of Mace (an open source Mac emulator) and Douglas Ridgway of WINE about
taking part, but haven't heard from them.

We talked about the education seminar, and again I asked about the audience. 
He thought that maybe we should give the seminar twice, pitched once to educators
and once to Linuxen.  I said that I'd rather have both groups sitting together
and talking and thinking about how they can help each other.  He liked that
idea, which seemed obvious to me and never occurred to him.

The upshot is, the newMedia folks need to find out a bit about the Linux
community if they're to make this successful (I think).  George and Evan, you folks
are going to have to talk to these people about how things work in Linuxland!

-- 
Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
dloss@suscom.net     those in authority off their guard and give
(570) 326-3987       you the opportunity to commit more.
                        Mark Twain