[Infopoint] Infopoint - lets make it happen!!

[Iain Roberts]

Hi Sean,

I feel your pain :-)

It's tricky as hell to figure out how to spend your time/money most 
effectively, especially when you haven't got too much of either.

Remember that most people want stuff that works and don't want to go 
along to meetings talking about the stuff that works.  After all, most 
people use Windows but I don't see huge crowds gathering for their local 
WUG meeting.

Sounds like you've put in a lot of work and come up with some creative 
ideas.  I can't believe that college complains about running a live CD - 
crazy stuff!

A couple of thoughts :

There are a lot of open source companies around.  Most do not have 
stacks of cash, but are generally happy to help.  I've got one (based in 
Manchester) and a know a few others over in Sheffield.  South Yorkshire 
has a lot of FLOSS stuff going on; don't know about Humberside though. 
If it would be useful to have something coming from either a company or 
an official public sector body, it can quite probably be arranged.

One approach that I haven't tried, but I always thought would be 
interesting, would be to talk to schools and colleges about the legal 
issues of large numbers of their students running pirated copies of 
Microsoft Office.  Suggest that, as good citizens generally opposed to 
stealing, it might be an idea to at least make students aware of the 
issue and provide them with an alternative (OpenOffice.org v2) which you 
would be happy to provide.  Since OOo is highly compatable with MS 
Office (and as near 100% as makes no difference for essays, reports and 
the like) students then have the choice of using a legal product.

Maybe a link-up with Schoolforge?

Cheers,

Iain Roberts



naes yllek wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Apologies, for the delay in responding to original
> post.
> 
> Since the launch of InfoPoint & as part of our
> advocacy adventure, Hull LUG have been faithfully
> attending our local computer fair with three of us
> (TJ, Nathan & myself) in regular attandence. Initial
> interest was positive, on one night we couldn't keep
> up with demand and was burning CD's on the spot.

-- 
Iain Roberts

www.axiomtech.co.uk