[vox] Open Source talk at MOCC

[Bill Kendrick]

My talk on Open Source and Linux at the Mission Oaks Computer Club seemed
to go quite well today.

People were genuinely interested in OpenOffice.org, and I gave out
EVERY LAST COPY I had on-hand (prob. around 20-25 discs)!
That wasn't even enough!

Surprisingly, I gave all but one copy of _Knoppix_ I had, too!
They didn't move right away, but once I re-explained just what the disc was,
the hands started going up to grab a copy. :^)


Before my presentation, a woman from a local school district(?) came to
hand out brochures and schedules for adult classes, and spoke about the
various introductory computing, and senior-oriented computing classes they
offer.

One thing she mentioned is that their computer labs all have Windows 2000
and Office XP, and they use a book on MS Word for their first couple of
'basics' courses.

A fellow in the audience asked if they offer discount copies of Office XP,
which they don't, although apparently you can go to CompUSA, say
"I'm a student," and get it for the reduced price.


She was under the weather, and couldn't stay for my part of the talk,
but I gave her a copy of OOo and a card, with the hopes that they may
consider switching.  At that point, they can GIVE AWAY the software!

I'm going to see if I can get in touch with her proactively
(goin' on the "OOoffensive"? ;^) ) to suggest it outright. ;^)



The only 'negative' feedback I got from the talk was a fellow who first
was asking how the world was supposed to work if noone got paid for software.
Hard question to respond to with limited time! :^)  He also had concern
that Open Source software has pirated code.  Well, there are a lot of reasons
why that'd be _hard_, for one... but even so, how's that different from
non-Open-Source, y'know? :^)

Fortunately, most of the rest of the audience wanted to 'move on.' :^)


Anyway, I had fun!  Slides are online:
  http://www.lugod.org/presentations/mocc-oss/



-bill!
bill@newbreedsoftware.com                           Got kids?  Get Tux Paint! 
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