[Klug-general] [Klug-General] Maidstone Meeting March09 - SYNOPSIS

[Colin McCarthy]

On a windy and rainy Saturday the following people made the new early start
of 9am for our March meeting.

Colin McCarthy
Nathan Friend
Tom Groves
Jake (new)
Ifor
Dan Attwood
Paul Littlefield
Gavin
Dan Subert

While 9 people is well down on our previous Maidstone meeting of 21 it was a
great meeting, probably because of the adhoc talks and demo's that seemed to
flow one after the other by accident.

To start someone mentioned about http://video.linuxfoundation.org/ so we
watched the three featured videos from the 'make a Linux commercial'
competition. I am sure as a LUG we could make a better one :-)

Watching the video's got me to use my 3G dongle, as the schools filtering
would not allow the video site, so I did a quick impromptu 'how-to use and
connect with a 3G dongle in Ubuntu'. I also showed www.greenhughes.com/ and
sung the blogs praises.

Next Dan Attwood gave us a walk through of F-Spot and how to store and 'tag'
our photo's. He then also quickly showed us the beta of  'Jaunty' which is
Ubuntu 9.04 and this spured a quick conversation about Ext4, which is the
new filesystem offered in Ubuntu 9.04.

Paul then showed us Boxee.  Again my 3G dongle had to be used because of the
school filtering and Paul was very impressed how quick it was to setup on
his laptop, running Mint Linux.  I think I made a sale for 3G dongles :-)
Boxee did have a sweet GUI and some interesting social features, but is new
and crashed when Paul tried to play music via it.  I am sure Boxee will be
mentioned again next month during the MythTV talk.  During the Boxee
discussions other social media sites/services were mentioned including
www.spotify.com and Dan Subert gave us a demo of it on his iPhone.

Another impromptu setup and demo was SmartTech Smartboard tools on my Asus
eeePC which allowed the schools smartboard to be used.  The smartboard is a
touch sensitive whiteboard so I could use it to control my netbook.  (The
smartboard and tools was used for Jake's talk)

Jake our new member and meeting de-lurker then talked about his 'FOSS centre
& investment' idea's. His notes have already been posted to the mailing
list, but I will include again.

---

For those that are interested, here's my 'talk', in outline format:

FOSS centre & investment
========================
1. Digital Arts Project
2. FOSS centre
3. FOSS investment

My background is in graphic and web design, I used to teach at the
University West of England and I've been freelancing over the past 7
years, teaching web and FOSS topics on the side.

There are 3 I's which act as a barrier to the takeup of FOSS:
1. Inertia -- it's a lot of effort to change systems, at any level
2. Ignorance -- people just don't know about FOSS
3. Indifference -- people just don't care, and why should they?

IMHO, the inertia can be best tackled by focussing on *new* users and
markets, people who don't have established practises. Ignorance can be
overcome by education and promotion, indifference by creating
substantially better alternatives.

1. Digital Arts Project
-----------------------
I'd like to get back into teaching, and rather than be subject to the
bureaucratic processes of higher education, I'd like to set up a Digital
Arts Project, replete with its own bureaucracy ;)

It would initially focus on graphic design and web building (as this is
what I know), and then expand into music.

I'd like to find out more about funding for such a project -- I've had a
quick look at the European Social Fund and Learning & Skills Council and
I was wondering if anyone knew of other potential leads.

2. FOSS centre
--------------
I believe that FOSS software in the field of graphics (and
unquestionably in web build/dev) has reached a maturity so that it's
comparable to proprietary software for 95% of tasks for 95% of users.
The primary software in this field is GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus.

I also believe that the Free Open Source Software model of sharing,
cooperation and involvement should be championed, so my aim is for the
Digital Arts Project to solely run FOSS applications.

As a corollary, I'd like the Project to act as a FOSS friendly space,
where FOSS projects have a focal space in which to meet.

3. FOSS investment
------------------
Martin Dupras, an ex-colleague from UWE, proposed a system via which
public institutions could invest in FOSS. It would:
a) Be cheaper
b) Involve local tech support
c) Provide a mechanism for feature requests

Institutions who use the system would need to be matched with
individuals for tech support, and it would probably help a great deal if
there was some sort of accreditation for specific applications. Does
anybody know about the process for accreditation in education/training?

---

So that was it, not one of the best attended meetings but one of the most
interesting in my opinion.
Colin

Web Sites mentioned during meeting.
http://www.greenhughes.com/
http://www.spotify.com
http://www.o3spaces.com/
http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Support/Downloads/SBS/NBS10Linux.htm
http://www.boxee.tv/
http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
http://video.linuxfoundation.org/
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