[marketing-dev] Re: OPENOFFICE FOR TABLETS
On 6 August 2011 04:50, Louis Suárez-Potts lsuarezpo...@gmail.com wrote: hi, On 2011-08-05, at 23:47 , Andy Brown wrote: Louis Suárez-Potts wrote: Stephen, et al. I replied privately to Mrs Evaggelou, and pointed out that though OOo 3.3.x is licensed LGPL v3., the trademark for same is owned by Oracle and is not open source or copyleft: it is copyright. But the point, as I see it, is an ODF manipulator, editor, not OOo on a too small brain. I run LibO currently on a Asus Eee netbook with 1 Gig of RAM, 1.6 GHz Atom single core processor and Ubuntu/LibO. It's perfectly usable so I don't see any reason why multi-core ARM based tablets are going to be too small brain. I do think that the tablet market is largely wide open for OOo/LO but that window of opportunity could be narrow. It would be a good strategy to get OOo to Android asap because chances are that tablet users would also install OOo on any Windows PCs they use if it was on their tablet, especially if they use the tablet more. If one tablet manufacturer pre-installs OOo others will so as not to lose competitive edge. As time goes on I can see the imperative in making OOo a better experience on tablets rather than adding more features but in the first instance better to just get it working. -louis Andy -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications (The Schools ITQ) www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: Resigning as Marketing Project Lead
Yes, thanks Peter. Hope to see you around the net in future. I must try and get to visit China ;-) Thanks On 7 June 2011 14:31, Elizabeth Matthis e.matt...@yahoo.de wrote: Dear Peter, You have been wonderful as leader in many capacities. Thank you for so much commitment over the years and for your continuing support of OOo. Best wishes for success in your new position! Liz p.s. I know I have been offline much of the time due to my own job issues, but when I caught this note I had to chime in with my thanks after all you have done! --- Peter Junge p...@openoffice.org schrieb am Mo, 6.6.2011: Von: Peter Junge p...@openoffice.org Betreff: [marketing-dev] Resigning as Marketing Project Lead An: dev@marketing dev@marketing.openoffice.org, marcon mar...@marketing.openoffice.org Datum: Montag, 6. Juni, 2011 18:07 Uhr Hi everyone, I have to resign as OOo Marketing Project Lead because a new professional engagement I took several weeks ago will not leave me with enough time to appropriately care about my duties. Especially the stony road we're having ahead with the transition of the project to the Apache Software Foundation will require double efforts, hence it seems to be the right moment to make this cut. I will continue to contribute to OOo as time allows it and also continuing to moderate the mailing lists of the MP. Best regards, Peter -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications (The Schools ITQ) www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: OpenOffice.org to become an Apache Foundation Incubator Project
On 2 June 2011 16:42, Gozarks goza...@gmail.com wrote: Hello again... and thank you (everyone) for keeping this whole conversation so open and dynamic. As I have been listening, one key question has evolved for me: Where do I fit in? This because, as previously noted, I am not a coder... my expertise is marketing... and I got involved with OOo because I LOVE the applications, am a devout proponent of 'openness' (in comminication, self-governance, etc.), and I genuinely appreciate worthwhile opportunities to contribute what I know in the hopes of somehow 'making the world a better place'. That said, and Bernhard having raised the topic of OOo's large area of non-coding community, in context of Simon's encouragement that non-coders who feel they have been significant conributors to OOo should feel welcome to request inclusion in the Apache incubator project, please allow me to share the following: For starters, I do not consider myself a 'significant contributor' to OOo, however (and I say this with utmost respect), it seems to me that this is more of a 'glitch' (or a 'bug' if you will) in 'the management system' that has been operational in OOo. About which I rush to add that I do not see this as the 'fault' of any one person or group of people but more like a natural and (to some degree) necessary part of the process of organizational growth and community development, that may (once identified) be corrected and improved... much the same way y'all engineer 'patches' to fix bugs in programs. In this regard I would respectfully suggest that the 'bug' I see is that while OOo has a comprehensive 'marketing' community, as I am aware of things the vast majority of the folks who are involved with and make critical decisions about such projects as graphic design, news release authoring, website design (user interface) and the development of promotional strategy are not and have never worked as professionals in any of these fields. That is, as I am aware (and please correct me if I am wrong) most of the folks who are doing this 'marketing' work have vast professional expertise in coding and the complexities of sophisticated technological engineering, yet they are 'trying' to do a job (marketing) which requires an equally sophisticated yet substantively different set of 'complex engineering skills' and thus things which should (in terms of state-of-the-art marketing practice) be routinely done are unknown, trivialized or overlooked. And again respectfully, I find this especially true in terms of the OOo marketing community's (lack of?) a comprehensive plan to 'outreach' to the non-coding 'end users' of the programs. That is, every nuance of marketing (promotional materials, conferences, news releases) that I have been aware of over these past several years has been dedicated to and focused on 'coders'... which I personally see as a major glitch because it represents to me a 'disconnect' between the folks who are 'creating the tool' and the folks who are 'using the tool' to do work... (even though ALL of you use OOo 'to do work', respectfully, none of us are 'typical end users'. And my major concern about this is that over the long haul the 'product' will no longer 'meet the needs' of the typical consumer. But then hey, like I said, I do not see myself as a significant contributer to OOo. Just offering a personal perspective... (((hugs))) ~Christine Hi Christine, I think it is more complicated. John Mcreesh constructed a very detailed marketing plan - some would say overly so. Some marketing volunteers were technically savvy but by no means all. Some had qualifications/experience in marketing others none. Some marketing initiatives worked well with no budgets others didn't. I understand the point that over-focus on code can lose sight of the fact that the code is not much use if no-one uses it. My own quest has been to try and find a sustainable business model that could generate resources for marketing because at the time there was resource from Sun for developers but not for marketing. Things change. Under Apache I don't see that the situation for resources for marketing will be a lot different. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: Why TDF should be the place for one united Community
On 26 May 2011 15:18, Roman H. Gelbort ro...@piensalibre.com.ar wrote: El 26/05/11 13:09, Charles-H. Schulz escribió: But it's perhaps not very important at that stage. +1 I'm sorry by mistake the focus. Is better build the new idea for OOo comunity. :-) How about gaining agreement on governance. That is really the most significant issue since if it can be agreed most other things will fall into place. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: Why TDF should be the place for one united Community
On 26 May 2011 17:39, Charles-H. Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org wrote: Hello Ian, Le Thu, 26 May 2011 15:32:22 +0100, Ian Lynch ianrly...@gmail.com a écrit : On 26 May 2011 15:18, Roman H. Gelbort ro...@piensalibre.com.ar wrote: El 26/05/11 13:09, Charles-H. Schulz escribió: But it's perhaps not very important at that stage. +1 I'm sorry by mistake the focus. Is better build the new idea for OOo comunity. :-) How about gaining agreement on governance. That is really the most significant issue since if it can be agreed most other things will fall into place. That does make sense, but what do you specifically mean by an agreement on governance? If OOo and LO are to come together under one set of governance, the constitution/rules will have to be agreed. Here are some examples NOT specific suggestions, simply to illustrate the point. 1. TDF governance is adopted by all - in that case OOo community Council etc is absorbed into TDF 2. OOo CC is adopted by all - in that case TDF is absorbed into OOo CC 3. A new organisation is created with a new constitution and governance for both communities 4. Either governance is modified in some way to take account of the other 5. Each remains separate but agrees to cooperate in a sort of coalition. Once community and project governance is resolved the duly elected officers in consultation with the community can make decisions about eg development priorities use of names etc. I think until there is agreement on governance with delegated power to the governing body, there will always be the potential for acrimonious disagreement about every individual issue. -- Charles-H. Schulz Membre du Comité exécutif The Document Foundation. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: Why TDF should be the place for one united Community
1. TDF governance is adopted by all - in that case OOo community Council etc is absorbed into TDF 2. OOo CC is adopted by all - in that case TDF is absorbed into OOo CC 3. A new organisation is created with a new constitution and governance for both communities 4. Either governance is modified in some way to take account of the other 5. Each remains separate but agrees to cooperate in a sort of coalition. Once community and project governance is resolved the duly elected officers in consultation with the community can make decisions about eg development priorities use of names etc. I think until there is agreement on governance with delegated power to the governing body, there will always be the potential for acrimonious disagreement about every individual issue. I must say you got me confused here. :-) So let me try to address your 5 points, I understand you may be thinking about some more, but anyway that would be food for thought. Also, this is my opinion only, not the one of TDF. 5: this is in fact very feasible. The minimum being: we use ODF, stupid! but tighter cooperation is always good to work on. However the 5 can only work or even be possible if some development force still exists. Which means that the Hamburg engineers would continue to get paid for their work. 4. that would depend what you mean by modified in some way. We would much rather aggregate more contributors from OOo rather than modifying our governance to have one specific OOo representative who is not elected and only nominated by some strange authority. But we do have an Advisory Board, maybe we could work something out there. 3. frankly that would be a waste of time. Sorry to put it bluntly, but the way I always saw us (all of us, here) as one community and two projects. Basically, most of the community went away to create another new project because the first one was plagued by too many issues and uncertainty of the future. Now the former project is in peril, his resources are not being ensured by its sponsor... We created new structure, new processes (sometimes we kept the old ones), precisely to fix the project, while working as one community. 2. :-) 1. I actually have some questions about this one. You're alluding to a simple integration of OOo into TDF. That is very much what already happened, but there are still engineers here (who don't code anymore, I think) and a few people who sticked to OOo (no criticism from my side here). In this case we could think about ways to alleviate concerns from the OOo community but also to communicate about what we could then call unification. So to answer to your argument that we need to sort out governance first and then issues will be handled in due time I think I'm not so much in agreement with you, because I think the OOo project has come to a point where there are various diverging interests on the inside; I would even call them existential interests: there is a very skilled developers' workforce on one hand who might soon be looking for a job, on the other, there are several teams here and there, but mostly users. If you take a look at the size of the LibreOffice project (that's not meant for me to brag) I would actually say that it's got its own momentum now, while this project here is disagregating in its structure (but perhaps not in its ideas). Mixing the two governance would also be not supported by the LibreOffice folks. On the other hand, having some sort of representativity inside, say, TDF's Advisory Board might be a very good thing. So a mixture of 1 +4 +5 could be a good way forward, while not emphasizing too much on governance. I was careful to say in the original post that these were illustrative examples, not specific suggestions or recommendations. There are probably other possibilities too. Your reply is exactly why agreement (or disagreement) on governance is required. Without it there will be constant uncertainty and a lot of wasted energy and that is one thing neither group can really afford. btw, I'm speaking here as a neutral. I'm not trying to persuade anyone of any specific governance - the examples I produced were deliberately balanced in that respect. best, Charles. -- Charles-H. Schulz Membre du Comité exécutif The Document Foundation. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Charles-H. Schulz Membre du Comité exécutif The Document Foundation. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools
[marketing-dev] Re: ping
One thing that can benefit TDF is the OpenOffice.org brand. It is much more widely known so simply on that one issue to would be best to bury differences and work together to optimise all the possible resources in a single direction. (This is marketing so appreciation of the importance of building brand strength and how long that takes will no doubt be appreciated) -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: New strategies for OO (new subject)
maybe you are asking them the wrong questions? Making the wrong sales proposals? I do think it is compelling that we work with SMBs; but I also think it is absolutely necessary that a) the community of OOo and LO reunite and reconcile, so that we can be strongly stepping into the future; Strongly agree with that. and b) that IBM, Red Hat, Canonical, and even Google (as well as of course Novell/Attachmate) collaborate under the same roof to share the immense costs of making this thing they all benefit from and which even more will add to. I'd say bring them together to develop a sustainable commercially viable proposition and don't get bogged down in emotion like not for profit. Do what will work. Machiavelli had some good points :-) Just my 5 cents. Let's try make OpenOffice -together with LO if possible- the most used office suite. It would be really a pitty to stop now. Actually, it would be a tragedy. So let's devise a business plan that will work. Just back to my Paris hotel room after a lot of beers, red wine and Calvados so apologies if any of this is not as I intended ;-) Ramon Cheers Louis Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: :-) I am. My strategies are, obviously, to invoke the established stakeholders—IBM, Red Hat, to name but two, but also Google—in the gambit. But the issue is even more interesting than money alone. Much of the secret of OOo's sauce lies not in the recipe, which is open, but in the makers, who are like chefs the world round, only more so. And with Oracle's renunciation, they are obviously affected. How, it's not clear. But if I were in the team, I'd be no doubt updating my résumé—and be fending off hot solicitations. In short, time is of the essence. LibreOffice, TDF, do not have the full resources to continue, let alone advance OOo. They can differentiate it, which is to be lauded, but they have their own uncertainties. They do not appeal, too, to enterprises; we do. Enterprises can be public sector or private. They have the same concerns: reliability, predictability, stability, and super-good QA. That all takes money not just in the present but in the future. So, these are not trivial points. I've been working sub rosa because that's the way this is done. And even so, I've been pretty much shut out of a lot of discourse. Oracle has been absolutely mum about OOo's copyright and development future, though I've asked. They are surely in talks with the usual suspects, at least, I hope so. But the discussions are hardly including the OOo community—not me, at least, and not really any I know involved with OOo. What I'll do is what I promised earlier: write an open letter to Edward Screven, the Oracle VP who issued the announcement 15 April. And I also would very much appreciate it, and I think the entire OOo community would, too, if IBM and other stakeholders, such as Google and Red Hat execcs-I'll spare names—would engage the community representatives, in the plural or even singular, to proceed. What counts here is not my presence or participation per se, that's irrelevant and immaterial, but the continuation of OOo as that set of tools enterprises and users the world round expect to be there, as a community thing is. So, we are doing things. And I just wish I could speak more, or write more on this. I also wish I had more to speak, write, say. But you see the issues. They are not secret, they are not hard to comprehend, they are not hard to digest. We need not just the funds but the chefs, and we need not jus to continue status quo—that did not work, obviously—but to re-do things, re-set things, improve: no one liked the old logistics of power, all wanted change. This is our opportunity, and let's begin with the reconciliation, with the stakeholders, so that we can continue working on this. And one more point: OOo makes money. It makes money not just for the ecosystem stakeholders, like Ian, Jean, and many many others, including me, now—but for the stakeholders, in much the same way that an Eclipse like platform or Apache does. By providing the source technology that creates new markets. -louis On 2011-05-18, at 19:21 , Jean Hollis Weber wrote: On Thu, 2011-05-19, Ian Lynch wrote: if we need 10m per year lets work out strategies to generate it. +1 --Jean -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received
[marketing-dev] Re: ping
On 18 May 2011 23:38, Louis Suarez-Potts lsuarezpo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On 2011-05-13, at 04:39 , Ian Lynch wrote: I know this might be a bit of an emotive topic for some, but wouldn't it be an idea to open up dialogue with the LibreOffice people? A split community was never an ideal situation from a simple logical point of view. Ok, there are emotional wounds to heal but talking about possibilities without any commitment on either side can't do any harm. Maybe this is already happening? Actually, Florian and I are discussing that exactly. The days of stiff difference are over with; were over with when Oracle renounced OOo as a revenue source. And in their lieu, discussions of reconciliation. To be sure, there are still personal differences. These are, to me, not irrelevant but ought not to stop the development of the code by the larger community. What counts, what makes up, what comprises that larger community is of some debate. We need a lot of money to develop the code. We need, that is, far more than LibreOffice or TDF or any single company can probably provide. Figure more than 10M USD/annum. That's to develop the code, test it, distribute it, and move ahead into areas that go beyond the limits of legacy. Unfortunately, for something like OOo, a community effort, still needs huge buckets of money. It's not about corporations, per se. It's about needing to get dedicated developers, one way or another, working on the code, so that it can be reliably produced, and satisfy the most demanding expectations. Meanwhile, I continue to drive ODF interest, and continue to represent OOo at ODF events; and continue to represent, as much as I can, as energetically as I can, to the world. I have no animus toward LibreOffice, though I do have my share of doubts; but my spirit is stamped with OOo, its community, its goal, of providing reliable and reliably, the best productivity tools there are to the most people. This is good to hear, and if we need 10m per year lets work out strategies to generate it. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: ping
I know this might be a bit of an emotive topic for some, but wouldn't it be an idea to open up dialogue with the LibreOffice people? A split community was never an ideal situation from a simple logical point of view. Ok, there are emotional wounds to heal but talking about possibilities without any commitment on either side can't do any harm. Maybe this is already happening? On 13 May 2011 03:40, Gozarks goza...@gmail.com wrote: Clarification please, re: license, copyright, resources... who owns all this stuff now? Thanks, ~Christine On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:21 PM, Louis Suarez-Potts lsuarezpo...@gmail.com wrote: I would love for there to be clarity. I am not alone. The burden of providing that clarification, however, does not rest with us who have no knowledge but on those who do. The areas where some clarity would be useful (to put it mildly) include: license, ownership of copyright, developer resources, and so on and so forth. It is not even the case that other projects using OOo technology have that much greater insight. They do not. They may have more activity, but absent the energy of production, there is no production of energy. Louis On 2011-05-12, at 22:17 , Peter Junge wrote: On 12.05.2011 10:01, Andy Brown wrote: Peter Junge wrote: pong On 05/11/2011 09:02 PM, Alexandro Colorado wrote: ping -- *Alexandro Colorado* *OpenOffice.org* Español http://es.openoffice.org Is this what we have been reduced to? Maybe that's one of the sad conclusion. A bit more clarity about the future could certainly help ... Peter -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: Interesting News
On 16 April 2011 04:34, Louis Suarez-Potts lsuarezpo...@gmail.com wrote: All, As others have noted… well, this is interesting news.* And it comes as news, indeed. It also comes unattached with any actual explication as to what it means in practice. And there are many questions, and I've asked my former colleagues some of them. The most obvious being, of course, Will Oracle contribute code to the development of OpenOffice.org as it has in the past? Right now, Oracle does virtually all of the coding for OpenOffice.org. The resulting code is then worked on by competing projects—either to make it more compatible with Microsoft Office, or to make it work with established frameworks, or whatever. As of now, the code is mature and powerful; it is being used by tens of millions and being adopted by even more every year. I am not concerned about the present, for OpenOffice.org addresses present needs more than adequately. I am, however, really interested in seeing what the future brings. And for that, I think we, the OpenOffice.org community, need to be bold. I envision a future where the tools for intellectual production are free, use open standards that can be widely implemented, and that are not limited to this or that environment but freely adaptable to a range of devices, mobile or not. The anchor here is the ODF, the format that transcends any particular implementation but which is only fully realized by the most comprehensive, OpenOffice.org. And the tools, such as those making up OpenOffice.org, to satisfy my vision, and the vision of the community, as I understand it, must be free and open. But from a practical point of view there needs to be some sort of resource generator to sustain development. If Oracle withdraws all the development resource it makes it far more difficult for these aspirations to be realised. We have concrete evidence that there is demand for OpenOffice.org certification. We have the infrastructure to support it and we know that the potential income to the community could easily be in the 10s of millions of dollars. Question is how to make it most likely that that potential can be realised? Louis Suarez-Potts, PhD Community Manager Chair, Community Council OpenOffice.org Blog: http://ooo-speak.blogspot.com/ -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
[marketing-dev] Re: Budget for Hirano
On 18 March 2011 05:17, Peter Junge p...@openoffice.org wrote: Kazunari-san, I've been reading your blog and now I want to get your recommendation which organization to donate to. Some of the large international relief organizations are not too effective because their rate of administrative expenses is bad. Would be great to know an organization who ensures that the donations reach the victims quick and directly. Same for me. Our best wishes to you Kazunari-san Best regards, Peter On 03/17/2011 02:03 PM, Kazunari Hirano wrote: Hi all, I and my families are OK. But very serious situation is going on. Please see my blog. http://openoffice.exblog.jp/ We need your help. Thanks, khirano PS: I have to go out now and make a long line to get gas and fuel for my heater and my car. On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 6:49 PM, Cor Nouws oo...@nouenoff.nl wrote: Hi Alexandro, Thanks for posting this. I got no reply from khirano by mail. Well, let's say that in all the mess and tragedy, it is relative good news from him at least. Feeling sad, Cor Alexandro Colorado wrote (16-03-11 05:41) Hi I would like to support a donation for Hirano Kazunari, a well known contributor of the OOo JA organization and ex community council member who has served for this community for many years. I just got an email about his condition, even if his city was not on the most dangerous area, he did live close there, and at the moment he is finding himself struggling since his house and the school where he teaches have been very affected by this condition. We at the ES community are starting collecting some money to send him but we already know it won't be enough. I encourage the rest of the OOo community to do the same. I think this is one of the things that no matter the condition we should step up to the situation and help out a brother in need. His blog already have some posts on how to better send him the money. You can find more information at his blog on what is needed under Personal: http://openoffice.exblog.jp/ -- *Alexandro Colorado* *OpenOffice.org* Español http://es.openoffice.org -- - http://nl.libreoffice.org - giving openoffice.org its foundation :: The Document Foundation - -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- - To unsubscribe send email to dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands send email to sy...@marketing.openoffice.org with Subject: help
Re: [marketing] EducOOo donated code for ARM Linux port
On 19 February 2011 07:41, eric b eric.bach...@free.fr wrote: Hi, For your information : http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=117017 Linux ARM is extremely promising for the future, and imho it worth to improve it asap. Why is MS porting Windows to ARM? - There is at least a significant chance that as mobile technologies move up into the desktop and laptop space, ARM designs will largely displace x86 as the standard for general purpose computing. ARM is licensed to multiple manufacturers and is significantly more efficient in terms of energy needed per software transaction. ARM core designs integrate well with other chip designs eg Nvidia graphics etc. and are low cost to manufacture. Multiple ARM cores will fit on small bits of silicon. The ARM designers had very little money so they built something simple and efficient. This gives it competitive advantage over x86 particularly but not only in mobile markets. Unless Intel license Atom designs to other manufacturers and improve those designs quite a lot, they are not going to compete in this market in the longer term. Interesting times ahead. Thanks, Eric Bachard -- qɔᴉɹə Education Project: http://education.openoffice.org Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org Blog : http://eric.bachard.org/news -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales.
Re: [marketing] OOO 3.3
On 31 January 2011 15:24, Rev JP Webb (Work) jp.w...@btinternet.com wrote: To whom it may concern I used openoffice 3.0 but I seriously need a proper MS publisher replacement. Draw does not cut the mustard and Scribus is not user friendly. Try Inkscape. For flyers, leaflets etc - I did the colour covers for our assessors handbook in it. Personally I would much rather use Inkscape to do the covers and Writer for the text inside than use a DTP program of any type. You have to learn how to use Inkscape and GIMP together to get the best of them but for graphics, labels etc I can't think of much they can't do pretty efficiently. If you want turnkey wizards for layouts you are going to be disappointed but then again, I would always want a one off individual layout rather than one which screamed - he did this in Publisher! If you are publishing colour magazines with irregular text flow around graphic objects on many paged multi-column documents then you probably need something like Quark Express not MS Publisher in any case. Then you are into a lot of Euros ;-). Until the open source movement comes up with something comparable to publisher I am afraid I will have to stick with Microsoft (as do many others I know who need a simple but effective dtp application). Well it all depends on whether someone with the skills and inclination or the funds agrees with you. Personally it doesn't bother me because I can do all I need for my company using existing tools. What you need is to get all those that have a need to get together and do something about it. I don't see it as being a high priority for the OOo community because there are many other things that are more important and there are limited resources. Yours Paul Rev Paul Webb East Molesey Surrey KT8 9DU -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales.
Re: [marketing] training oppertunities
On 2 January 2011 10:53, Amal Senerath amalsenar...@yahoo.com wrote: hi, I am Amal Senarath from Sri Lanka, work as a IT lecturer /trainer /consultant including Microsoft office. but because of third licence software most of the companies are struggling. so i would like to train the people for open office and introduce it to some companies. please assist me. IT WILL BE THE END OF MICROSOFT OFFICE IN SRI LANAK. PLEASE DO YOU HAVE ANY CERTIFIED COURSES FOR THE OPEN OFFICE We do have qualifications based on the UK National Vocational Qualification, the ITQ. This fits to OOo directly now. We have a meeting in Berlin in 4 weeks time to decide a strategy for further developing the certification of OOo. We have projects in Malaysia and Kenya as well as across Europe. If you need more information perhaps contact me off list. Amal Senarath NCC-UK, MBCS, MBA-ITS,ICDL -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales.
[marketing] Digital Inclusion
A bit off topic perhaps, but I drafted a unit on Digital Inclusion at the request of e-skills http://theingots.org/community/Digital_Inclusion. (e-skills is the UK Sector Skills Council for Business and IT)The idea is to relate open source, and open systems to inclusion. The unit has the potential to be accepted in the ITQ framework for apprenticeships etc referenced to the European Qualifications Framework. It would probably be useful before the next Awarding Body Forum meeting of e-skills to have some feedback from this and other Open Source groups so I can pass that back. A couple of simple questions. Is a unit like this needed to raise awareness and understanding of the growing importance of open systems and the relationship with equal opportunities and inclusion legislation? What modifications (if any) need to be made? If you can spare a bit of time to look at the unit and e-mail me a brief answer to each of the questions it would be a big help. Thanks. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQwww.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales.
Re: [marketing] Community - who and where are we? [was: Logo for 10th...]
On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 5:16 PM, ian.ly...@theingots.org wrote: Op 9-10-2010 2:15, Bernhard Dippold schreef: It represents all community members and therefore it represents the community as a whole. The Community Council was elected to, and is supposed to, represent the community. It does not necessarily follow that it represents the community. That gets us into democratic representation. Systems of democracy require free elections so that if the CC is not reflecting the community perspective it can be voted out and a new committee established. Most democratic systems have their flaws but mostly it's a matter of some accountability is better than none. One of the things that should be done The problem of imitating 'real life' in electronic life is that these models are forced and usually creates big issues. Remember BoB trying to imitate a human habitat? I'm not sure what BoB is. Electronic life is real life. It's just a bunch of people sharing stuff using technology. Decisions and relationships are human, the technology just has the capability of influencing them eg falme wars :-) However the human habitat is a bit odd when it comes to structures of government, since governents are very anti-technology and very human prone to errors we fail imitating a similar structure to rule our community and that is our key issue. I think we are confusing government and governance here. Democracy is not simply related to national governments, clubs, societies and even businesses run on democratic lines. What we are talking about is democratic governance of the community - well a dictator could take over but probably the community wouldn't cooperate. This is to an extent the situation with Oracle. People can always vote with their feet (Or log off ;-) ) Things get delayed, miss explained or missunderstand from humanerror, I would think that these government models are not adecuated to our current systems. We could automate decision making or interaction if we have things that help us to achieve this leaving most things to software as opposed to human. Sure the mechanism can vary. But in the end democracy comes from the Greek demos - by the people and Krateo - rule. Exactly how that is implemented will vary. regards in the light of the new Foundation should be a review of the constitution and due process in consultation with the community with a vote on a new system of management with all members re-standing for election on that manifesto. This also raises the issue of who is eligible to vote. Indeed it raises the question of whether a FOSS project can be run democratically. I would like to think so but maybe I'm deluded :-). -- Vriendelijke groet, Simon Brouwer. | http://nl.openoffice.org | http://www.opentaal.org | - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org -- *Alexandro Colorado* *OpenOffice.org* Español http://es.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Community - who and where are we? [was: Logo for 10th...]
Hi Alex, all Hi Bernhard, Congratulations on a very good analysis. OOo has needed a foundation from the outset. It was inevitable, only the timing has been uncertain. If Oracle didn't know this they didn't do proper due diligence. The next question is how to optimise the resources available to the foundation so that it is not only sustainable but becomes the definitive focus for the development of open source office productivity tools. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] OOo 5.0: Some ideas
On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 12:38 PM, luiz luizh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Charles, Can you write some words about your lecture on OOo 5.0 Ideas? Our objective is to publish them on special edition of BrOffice.org Magazine. The deadline is 19/09. I was during the event and aside from what Charles can comment on this. The conversation basically went to think ahead on the way people use OOo. To not think in few 'catch up' features for OOo but to actually innovate and have a PDF moment comparing to the year OOo integrated the export to PDF in OOo. We need to do things that the competition haven't thought about doing instead of just following trends. The future is mobile computing and seamless web integration. OOo lite to run on Android handsets would be a killer, especially if it also enabled seamless publishing of HTML5 documents. He did mentioned areas of innovation like mobile, cloud (but a different cloud), focus on the integration and also talk about how we can rethink some of the components like OpenOffice.org Web which is a dead module. Change from an HTML editor and think more of a information processor, including authoring of things that you use in web like Blogs, etc. There was some input from Lars and Dimitri (I think) as well at the end of the presentation. Best Regards, Luiz Oliveira PS: We have the file (odp) and summary of your presentation at OOoCon - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org -- Alexandro Colorado OpenOffice.org Español http://es.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Re: [marcon] Re: [marketing] Fund request for top page renewal at ja.oo.o, Terada-san
On 2010-06-17, at 10:55 , Cor Nouws wrote: There will be some draft for funding approval guidelines soon (..). So I think that is a good moment to look at details: what can reasonably be considered useful to fund. of course. for anything like this, careful scrutiny and strong argument is requisite. It might be worth noting that the EU is extending projects to include countries outside Europe and there are specific priorities for languages. It might well be worth seeing if grants are available for translations. We currently have an application for 300,000 Euros to support OOo certification submitted and we will find out the result at the end of July. Even if it is not successful we can simply apply again next year and keep going until it is. Our current project is tangentially beneficial to OOo because it encourages the use of Open Systems and Open Source general productivity tools. If anyone has 10-15 minutes to spare please contribute to our research at http://www.edunetbg.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=39256lang=en%20%3E Please copy the link to any lists/networks where you think there might be interest. Thanks. Ian Regards, Cor louis - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Open Source Survey
http://www.edunetbg.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=39256lang=en%20 Hi all, there is a survey at the above link we are using for collecting some FOSS related data for an EU project. We have applied for a further EU grant to support OOo certification and the info from the above survey could help this too. So if you have time and can fill in and spread the survey further, please do. Thanks. Ian Lynch - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] use OO through the net
Hi Folks, I am wondering that providing openoffice through the internet. My idea is that - OO will be distributed to the user through syncing, such as dropbox, ubuntu one, etc. - The user will not be necessary to install it. - They just click on it and use it. (like USB portable applications) Since the distribution channel (syncing technology) portable technology is already available, why couldn't we combine allow users to use it? Looking forward to get more brainstorming ideas from you guys. In principle, this is a very good idea. We definitely need a web version of OOo and this seems a step in the right direction. Snag is getting someone to do it. Regards, -- Wunna Ko --- Get Paid To Read Emails. Free To Join Now! http://www.emailcashpro.com/?source=Emailr=onlinestore - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Why does Microsoft fear OpenOffice.org?
Rockaway Twp. Library, 61 Mount Hope Rd., is offering a new computer class on OpenOffice software. It will cover how to download the software, create documents and spreadsheets. http://www.northjersey.com/community/at_the_library/events/80325597.html The intro to Openoffice is a new course. Got to love that! Unfortunately, they still giving MS Office classes. Happy Holidays Everyone! Just so everyone knows, Alex, Evan, Myself and Gabriel have made a start with the certification project. We have generic standards in place compatible with the European Qualifications Framework and Alex and Evan are putting OOo specific details to them. We have a meeting arranged in Prague 30/31st January of potential partners for an EU funded project to support development including language translations and on-line courses. Ian Russell On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 5:06 AM, John McCreesh jp...@openoffice.org wrote: Most people think that [OOo's] barely a blip on Microsoft's radar. Clearly, it's far more than that, and the numbers back that up. http://blogs.computerworld.com/15327/why_does_microsoft_fear_openoffice_org This story is now starting to gain momentum - if you are looking for a topic for a New Year's blog, may I suggest this one ;-) John -- John McCreesh - Marketing Project Lead - OpenOffice.org Join the hundred million - http://why.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Problem in using open office
On Tue, 2009-01-06 at 15:23 +0530, Vikram Gaur wrote: Hi, while using openoffice.org 3.0 on windows platform, some problems are being faced: 1.When two persons are opening same document in network both gets the document in writable mode. 2.In Calc filter utility doesn't allow to filter more than 2 rows. Best place to bring this up is on the discuss list. I ccd it there but you need to subscribe to that list to get the replies. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Re: [cd-rom] Happy New Year
ian.ly...@zmsl.com wrote (1-1-2009 20:32) The policy of not touching the front-page is a big mistake since it give us little to work with. Most of the communication is obscure to the user, just like the 'why' campaigns and others. IMHO if the marketing project means anything it should have full control over what goes on the front page of the web site. After all, it is the shop window for the project. The fact that the front page isn't in the control of the obvious community members that take responsibility for marketing says something significant about project management. John and Florian do a lot for the front page of OpenOffice.org I'd just observer that doing stuff and control are not the same thing. -- Ian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Re: [cd-rom] Happy New Year
I would say the problem is a lack of concrete discussion; I'm sure that if someone put forward a [specific] suggestion about what they think would be good to have on the homepage / some other page(s) on the OOo website, they won't be ignored. I'm just thinking back to a few years ago when this sort of discussion was much more common. Nothing happened so pretty well all those involved appear to have moved on to other things. Certainly my own anedotal encounters with anything to do with the web site was a) there was a massive technical barrier for anyone wanting to take part b) you could spend ages on something only to have it vetoed by the community manager. Even getting a wiki established took several years battle. Life is too short for battling with such bureaucracy and I doubt many volunteers are going to consider that a good use of their time. The solution is simply one of delegation. Give the marketing leads control over the front page of the web site. That is a simple decision but it requires trusting the marketing project leads - but why have them if they can't be trusted with some real influence? What does democracy mean in the project? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
[marketing] Re: [cd-rom] Happy New Year
A general message to everybody on the list to wish you all a Happy New Year, and thank you for your contributions to the 'cause'. Although the general economy is not in a very good state, this may - in a sideways direction - increase interest in OpenOffice.org and give us a chance to get into particularly more businesses looking to cut costings! Perhaps we should be making this point more forcibly through the marketing project. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Re: [cd-rom] Happy New Year
The policy of not touching the front-page is a big mistake since it give us little to work with. Most of the communication is obscure to the user, just like the 'why' campaigns and others. IMHO if the marketing project means anything it should have full control over what goes on the front page of the web site. After all, it is the shop window for the project. The fact that the front page isn't in the control of the obvious community members that take responsibility for marketing says something significant about project management. -- Ian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Thoughts about the help section in OOo
On Fri, 2008-12-26 at 13:58 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello, while many of us are digesting the turkey, I was caught by John Mc Creesh's blog post the importance of friends: http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/2008/12/21/the-importance-of-friends/ Basically this is some results of a marketing survey about OpenOffice.org Friends (and that could mean a lot for any plans on social networks) seem to be our first advocates. Friends tell their friends about OOo, install it on their friends' computers, etc. But the interesting and much overlooked trend in that survey, I think, is that to the question on where does anyone look for help on OOo, it's not just the friend who provides the answer, but our good old OOo help section, the one that is embedded with the suite. It's been around for many years, but since this seems to be an important part of the user's experience, I would have like to hear some thoughts on improvements, ideas, and how we can better position that feature in our product 'mix'. Maybe rebrand users in some way as friends. Or maybe establish the concept of the OOo Family. Users is a bit impersonal and group empathy and synergy are powerful agents in maintaining any affiliation. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Introduction
On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 17:15 +0100, Rosana Ardila wrote: Hello All, I wanted to introduce myself to the OpenOffice.org marketing project. I will be working at Sun until the end of April, also helping with the marketing for OpenOffice.org. And I want to use the time to work with and in behalf of the OpenOffice.org community. I am very interested in Free and Open Source Software in general and have been using OOo for years, recommending it to everybody. So I'm glad to have the opportunity now to do the same in a bigger channel. I have an idea I would like to share with you and put to discussion. I thought it would be interesting to organize a video contest for OOo. Short videos (30 secs) would show what OOo and its community are, and why the project is so special. Young artists, students and creative community members could create great material, from their different cultural perspectives.That's just a very short description, I can send yo later some detailed information about a possible organization. Let me know your thoughts on this. Hi Rosana, sounds a great idea. I will publicise it on our community site where we have upwards of 3000 school learners doing projects for their IT qualifications. They could use such a video for their Level 2 certificates. We might also be able to offer some small prizes for the competition. This is a bit like what we did for the Otto mascot some years ago and I think it is about time we did something else like this. I am looking forward to working with you and I hope I can give you a hand here :) cheers, Rosana. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Microsoft ODF plans for Office 2007 SP2
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 14:54 +0530, Vikram Gaur wrote: Web version has limited future because of bandwidth. Google will take care of that. That is like saying MS will take care of the desktop for us! At the moment there are bandwidth limitations but they will gradually ease and those that go into the market early will dominate just as MS has done at the desktop. We need to look further ahead if we are serious about long term survival. Still if we want to compete with that we can convert openoffice.org to web version. Question is how? Who will take responsibility for doing it? Sun has the technology with Global Desktop to offer thin client access to anyone through a standard web browser. Question is where the revenue can be generated to fund the servers etc. MS will be doing it from advertising like Google. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Microsoft ODF plans for Office 2007 SP2
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 10:02 +, Richard Rothwell wrote: 2008/12/17 Ian Lynch ian.ly...@zmsl.com: On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 14:54 +0530, Vikram Gaur wrote: Web version has limited future because of bandwidth. Google will take care of that. That is like saying MS will take care of the desktop for us! At the moment there are bandwidth limitations but they will gradually ease and those that go into the market early will dominate just as MS has done at the desktop. We need to look further ahead if we are serious about long term survival. Still if we want to compete with that we can convert openoffice.org to web version. Question is how? Who will take responsibility for doing it? Sun has the technology with Global Desktop to offer thin client access to anyone through a standard web browser. Question is where the revenue can be generated to fund the servers etc. MS will be doing it from advertising like Google. It may be that organisations will want to run their _own_ web based office suites. That would offer security, etc. A true FOSS web based office suite might well be rather popular. It would mean that others could offer a hosted service in competition with the big boys - in the same way that Web hosting, etc is offered. I think large hosting companies might offer it as value added to customers. I get web mail with a choice of SquirrelMail, Horde and Cube from my e-mail host. Why not a web hosting service that just happens to provide web based office facilities for free? Probably needs marketing to build a relationship with the biggest hosting providers. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Interesting article
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 08:29 +1000, Alex Fisher wrote: The Register had this interesting article this morning. Appears an entire high school class failed an IT exam because the submitted the exam in MS Word format, but the examining board doesn't accept Word documents http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/08/cotelands_word/ see also http://dida.edexcel.org.uk/home/spb/toolkit/. Interestingly, ODF is not listed either. Perhaps Ian can open talks with them (if he hasn't already :) ). Dida has been rather notorious for this type of thing happening. It is rather ironic that as an exam board specialising in open systems we do accept popular proprietary formats for the simple fact that causing this degree of customer angst is suicide commercially. We have the advantage of being small and flexible. We can educate without being dictatorial. We also provide assessment on demand to suit the client so it is rather different to the way Edexcel does it. Edexcel, perhaps feel that they are so powerful that they don't need to take such things into account but probably it's a consequence of being a large bureaucracy with rules that the moderators have no discretion over. I know for a fact that there has been massive migration to OCR nationals from Dida. OCR and Edexcel have a massive majority share of the market for IT school exams in England for age 16. It is one reason why we target younger children. Using the principle of disruptive innovation, there are more potential customers in the younger age groups and the trick is to get the price point down to where they can participate. There is no effective competition here and if we get them younger and earlier (including the .doc users :-) ) there is a good chance they will stay with us as our brand becomes stronger and they qualify earlier. So far things are going to plan, it just takes time and patience. One thing that does arise is the number of e-portfolios that start with one Drupal page with a load of MS Office files attached! The desktop paradigm is very firmly entrenched not least in teachers. Rather than simply failing the students we would rather inform them and their assessors of the issue and give them an opportunity to put it right. We are primarily interested in learning and getting them to demonstrate that learning. We only provide exemplars using Open systems but we acknowledge some schools have massive investment in proprietary systems so p***ing them off by being inflexible is not how to win friends and influence people :-) In practical terms, .doc and .xls are trivially easy to deal with in OOo, a bigger problem would be eg .pub or proprietary vector drawing formats. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Article: US consumers prefer OpenOffice to Google Docs
On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 15:32 +0100, Cor Nouws wrote: US consumers prefer OpenOffice to Google Docs http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21729/53/ Hosted, and generally free, office applications are being touted as a big threat to Microsoft's dominance of the desktop, but a survey of US Internet consumers found that free desktop based office apps like OpenOffice are what Microsoft should fear most. For now at least. ... Until there is an free on-line clone of MS Office :-) -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[marketing] Malaysia
Just back from Malaysia. They have an odf Olympiad for kids in addition to other strategies to move the entire public sector to open systems. OpenOffice.org has a high profile as part of the national migration strategy. I have blogged it here for anyone interested in some more details. http://www.theingots.org/community/node/6100 -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: SV: Re: [marketing] Contact bizdev/developers WAS Re: [marketing] OpenOffice.org Community Mapping Project
On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 14:01 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, i meant domain developers, i.e. members of the bizdev project with domain developer role. The context was clearified in a previous msg. Per Probably the same argument applies. If you want volunteers to commit their time, it has to be on their terms or at least terms attractive to them which really amounts to the same thing. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Contact bizdev/developers WAS Re: [marketing] OpenOffice.org Community Mapping Project
On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 15:15 +0200, Lars Noodén wrote: Ian Lynch wrote: ...Here are a few. Perceived to be controlled by Sun Yes, however, keep in mind that much of that perception has been cultivated through several years of attacks from MS both directly and through proxy. Case in point recent attempts to inject tainted code, or the ODF=OOo=Sun meme that MSFTers were pounding a few years ago Massive code base difficult to learn Yes. Needs to become more modular, which may in turn address your outstanding wish for smaller, faster OOo No progression routes for young people to learn to become developers There are also high barriers to entry even to otherwise simple activities like testing / QA and localization. I agree with that. That is more the area where INGOTs are targeted as realistically the Gold INGOT projects are not likely to be coding - maybe later when we develop a Platinum INGOT and beyond but that is a much smaller market and is not sustainable on current resources. It takes time to move the way people work - starting sooner just means the outcome happens sooner. Weak incentives to become a developer No great effort to keep volunteers that have any different views from the project controllers. Yes, but that was also when the project was more or less in isolation. Nowadays, you do have to be concerned about hijacking of the codebase by funded volunteers Is that good or bad :-) Until there is a systematic strategy to tackle these issues... So yes, a strategy is needed. That's probably something that can be started at the OOo conference in Beijing. I hope so, I want OOo to succeed and get stronger. I'm in Malaysia next week at their Government Open Source conference that happens to clash with the OOo Conference. From what I read there is a refreshing difference in the government attitude to ICT there compared to many so called developed nations. Personally, having committed time and money to OOo in the past, this is a significant reason why I now devote little time to the project. ROI is too low and I can be far more effective in other aspects of the free software movement. I know many previously committed volunteers that feel the same way. Same here. Regards -Lars -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Contact bizdev/developers WAS Re: [marketing] OpenOffice.org Community Mapping Project
On Sun, 2008-11-02 at 12:15 +0100, Per Eriksson wrote: I'd really suggest that the information is available when not using JavaScript. Talking to Louis and getting more developers is the solution if you ask me. The problem is that there has been a shortage of developers ever since the project began and there are never likely to be enough. What needs to be considered are strategies to increase the developer resource other than keep saying we need more developers. What are the key factors that prevent developer participation? Here are a few. Perceived to be controlled by Sun Massive code base difficult to learn No progression routes for young people to learn to become developers Weak incentives to become a developer No great effort to keep volunteers that have any different views from the project controllers. There are probably many more. Until there is a systematic strategy to tackle these issues, I wouldn't expect to see any change in the developer situation any time soon. (Look at what happened with the Xara Linux project when Xara wanted to keep control and then expected volunteers to do what it wanted.) An openoffice.org foundation would likely make a significant strategic difference but this has been discussed ad nauseam and there is clearly no political will at Sun to make it so. Personally, having committed time and money to OOo in the past, this is a significant reason why I now devote little time to the project. ROI is too low and I can be far more effective in other aspects of the free software movement. I know many previously committed volunteers that feel the same way. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] [Fwd: [users] Open Source software workshop]
On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 21:59 +0100, Andy Loughran wrote: +1 I do think that Ian would be the man for the job. The company I work for (www.axiomtech.co.uk) also do talks of this type. I've forwarded the message to our company's mailing list. We've worked with Ian before, and there are some mutual connections - so hopefully we can come up with a decent solution. I am happy to do this, just depends on the exact date in February. Wolverhampton is only 30 minutes from here. Regards, Andy Loughran Alexandro Colorado wrote: I think Ian Lynch would be great contact for this. Being just a few miles from Wolverhampton. Other people that come to mind are the LugRadio guys that even if they are no longer doing the podcast, Jono Bacon and his crew can really put a show on how great open source is for the education. On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Cor Nouws [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, Forwarded from the users-list Originele bericht Onderwerp: [users] Open Source software workshop Datum: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:52:07 +0100 Van: Mall, Sabrina [EMAIL PROTECTED] Antwoord-naar: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi, I have just been looking at your website and it was of interest to my organisation. IT Futures is apart of the University of Wolverhampton and we run government funded IT projects. We are currently organising events/workshops in the Midlands for micro businesses to inform them of open source software to help them with payroll, website development and customer relationship management. I am looking at booking a venue for maximum 12 delegates in the Midlands area around Feb 2009 covering those areas. We are looking for speakers to inform our delegates of open source software in those areas and I wondered if this is something you can cater for? Sabrina Mall BA (Hons), MAIB IT Futures e-Business Adoption University of Wolverhampton Wulfruna Street Wolverhampton WV1 1SB Tel: 01902 518599 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile: 07800 641009 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Microsoft: OpenOffice better than Google Apps
On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 17:33 +0100, John McCreesh wrote: Steve Ballmer has insisted that OpenOffice is a far better rival to Microsoft's Office than Google's applications suite http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/microsoft-open-office-a-bigger-rival-than-google-apps-476243 I wonder is he one of the over two million people who have downloaded OpenOffice.org since we released 3.0? Possibly not him personally but it would be inconceivable that MS would not take notice of OOo releases in great detail. Google apps will only become a rival if Google put a lot more effort into the Word Processor and Presentation software. The Spreadsheet is much the best component. If they did produce an on-line WP with most of the facilities of Word and Writer I think they would take a significant share of the market. Its a shame we can't do a web version of OOo - the only way I could think to make that work would be thin client logins like with Sun's Global desktop from a web browser but providing that as a free service is a tall order. It would be an interesting experiment though :-) -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[marketing] UK Schools open source project
http://www.opensourceschools.org.uk/ OOo3 prominent on the front page -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] [Ann] Call for donation for Education and Mac OS X porting projects
On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 15:44 +0200, eric b wrote: Hi, Several OpenOffice.org Projects have no or very limited resources, like e.g. Mac OS X Aqua port and Education Project (still incubator project). There were suggestions about setting up sustainable fund raising projects for education in the past but there has never been the will to do it. In fact in my own case I feel I was actively discouraged so took my resources to greener pastures. We are managing to sustain 5 people now but it has been a slow and painstaking process. However, it shows it is possible to develop a commercially viable business on open systems for education and we are still growing. I wish you bon chance, but unless OOo gets more organised eg like Mozilla foundation has, I don't hold out much hope. To continue the effort, like mentor students writing code for OpenOffice.org project, help developers attending conferences, or pay them expensive memberships for development (like Apple ADC, or iPhone SDK ), or even pay one skilled developer to write some new feature, they need a bit of money. For more information, please have a look at : http:// eric.bachard.free.fr/news ( and if you need more information, feel free to ask me in private ) Thank you ! Eric Bachard -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Partnership program
On Fri, 2008-09-05 at 01:29 -0500, Alexandro Colorado wrote: A few days back Florian mentioned the idea of a Marketplace for OOo. There has also been some talk about a partnership program. I guess I want to bring the discussion back on track. What exactly do we need to create this program. Should bizdev be the project involved. Who is part of bizdev (project lead?). Take a look at Moodle. They have a partnership programme which gives them a sustainable income. Moodle partners get rights to use the Moodle name officially in return for a small cut of their business earnings. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Training Module
On Sun, 2008-08-31 at 17:33 -0700, Rj ian Sevilla wrote: Hello guys, Can anyone point me if there's any openoffice training modules? In english.. http://theingots.org/moodle/course/category.php?id=3 You can make an account for free. Any support in making improvements is welcome. This course was devised by Gabriel Gurley in the USA, we just host it so he deserves the credit. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Microsoft and the BBC
On Fri, 2008-08-29 at 21:44 +0100, John McCreesh wrote: Alexandro Colorado wrote: This is an awesome video by the FSF showing how much money is spent by M$ sponsored organizationson closing up the information distribution. I am sure many in this team will find this video amazing to watch and also spark similar ideas on a marketing level. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sfQk9NXlns :-) John Just to say that the Open Schools Alliance and the Open Source Consortium were instrumental in making this happen. Dr John Pugh has been a great help with schools issues too and this combination is at least partly responsible for the BECTA actions in favour of open standards. I would encourage any other FOSS activists in any other countries to seek out informed political allies. Don't expect them to commit 100% of their time to FOSS as they will have a lot more important issues to deal with as well, but a targeted time in specific areas can be disproportionately effective. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] OpenOffice.org marketing materials?
On Fri, 2008-08-01 at 21:06 -0400, Yuhan Fang wrote: Hello everyone, Can anybody point me to something like a whitepaper on OpenOffice.org? I'm looking for a press-ready report that evaluates OpenOffice.org as a replacement for the Microsoft Office suite. Ideally, this should be targeted towards the education sector. I found many websites with informal reviews and comparisons, but I really need something more substantial to present my case to the IT overlords at my school. http://www.theingots.org/community/node/5480 The above is a link to web pages I'm preparing for the UK government backed Schools Open Source Project. It is aimed at education but is about FOSS in general rather than OOo specifically. There is a specific bit about OOo about 75% of the way down. I think this project at some point will fund more in-depth work on Open Source applications and OOo would be a likely candidate. There is also a free Moodle course on using OpenOffice.org at http://theingots.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=11 Just log in as a guest to check it out. You need to make an account - it's free - to do the tests. So if they say they are worried about training or support you have an answer. We also have government accredited qualification in Open Systems that are OpenOffice.org friendly. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Multimedia Ads of Open Office
On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 01:26 -0700, Rj ian Sevilla wrote: Is there an available multimedia ads of Open Office? id like to play it on the FOSS event this coming September... These You Tube Videos might be useful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFge2zTSN-A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55yMCYsG7o0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ--pVvbn1M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa5gPh8j9gQ -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[marketing] OOo Story to Digg
http://digg.com/microsoft/How_to_make_the_transition_from_MS_Office_to_Open_Office :-) Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[marketing] Moodle course for OOo
Hi all, At http://theingots.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=11 There is a Moodle course for teaching/learning Open Office. Anyone is free to make an account and use the course and I can give edit permission to anyone that wants to make improvements to it. You can do a lot simply by logging on as a guest but you need an account for quizzes etc. It's all free. The course was done by Gabriel Gurley and he has various other OOo related downloads at www.gabrielgurley.com Also language translations welcome. Other courses on the site support learning about open systems and open source technologies in a progressive and sequential way. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Re: Marketing Open Office in libraries?
On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 10:59 -0400, Anastasia Diamond-Ortiz wrote: Thank you for the quick responses. Am I free to create CDs for distribution to be public? Are there any existing marketing materials I should know about? Look on the marketing pages of the OpenOffice.org web site. Please do make CDs for distribution from the library. That would help the project a lot. Also take a look at www.portableapps.com. Here you can make portable versions of OOo to go an a USB pen drive. You could have it so visitors to the library could bring in a USB stick and set up Open Office to run from it on any computer without having to install it. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] Marketing Open Office in libraries?
There are a number of books in print, and there are a lot of materials available for download. Try some of these: http://documentation.openoffice.org/ http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation http://www.learnopenoffice.org/index.htm http://training.bytebot.net/ http://openoffice.resolvo.com/Student/studentIndex.jsp Also http://www.gabrielgurley.com/ Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[marketing] Microsoft come unstuck in Newham
At least part of the deal with Newham was related to compatibility of office software. They were persuaded away from OpenOffice.org and FOSS generally by a last minute cut-price offer from MS. http://digg.com/microsoft/London_council_dumps_Microsoft Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [marketing] How can OOo make you money?
What's missing is the connection between pure use value and all kinds of sale value. That's what we've been calling the because effect. You make money because of free and open code, not just with it. What this really means is that society benefits from FOSS because it is a fundamentally more efficient way of building global technological value. I suggest the relationship here is between foundations and the structures that rest on them. You can talk about architecture and design all day, but none of it will be worth anything if it doesn't sit on a strong foundation. This fact does not diminish the importance of foundations. Quite the opposite. Foundations are, in nearly all cases, 100% useful and 0% flashy. Their job is not to augment the building, but rather to augment the geology below it. The implication is not so much for individual companies to adopt FOSS but for governments to create the environment where FOSS can flourish. A fundamental change in attitude to intellectual property which is a pretty ephemeral concept in any case. Some examples would be 1. To revise the patent systems to remove threats to FOSS development and deployment 2. Provide incentives to universities and the education system to produce useful resources as a bi-product of the learning process 3. Make it mandatory for government software projects that produce code to license that code as FOSS. 4. Declare a firm target date say 2012, for the use of fully open standards for communications and data structures to be mandatory for government technologies. 5. Declare a firm target date say 2015, for all fundamental software infrastructure such as server and desktop operating systems to be FOSS. This would cost government very little but would have massive value in terms of return on investment in leading change. The main snag are the current vested interests that are fighting to maintain and even further entrench the status quo. Note that declaring an intention to deploy FOSS is not discriminatory. Any company can supply FOSS, develop FOSS, support it and deploy it. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[marketing] Another UK school taking up OOo
I was doing some initial INGOT training at Sandwich Technology College UK (place where sandwiches were invented :-) ) that has 1000 computers. They intend to migrate 1000 seats to OOo imminently. Just thought that another success is nice to know about :-) I think quite a lot more schools are using OOo, it's just difficult to get exact numbers. I think as Google docs get better known some will use them too so some competition, although it could be that Google Docs is seen to be complementary to OOo. I did lecture on ICT and enterprise yesterday using Google Docs presentation and it worked well with the advantage that the presentation can be shared immediately with the audience and worked on collaboratively on the web. http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=df399cxt_0fqfsc5cf A publicly available web based OOo would be a killer app (or Star Office). Maybe Sun could use Global Desktop and some dedicated servers to provide this as a service supported by advertising like Google. That would turn OOo/SO into a web based app with more comprehensive spec than Google docs. All this stuff will migrate from the desktop to the web and people are going to expect it easily accessible and free of charge. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[marketing] School kids blogging OOo
Thought there might be some interest in high school kids blogging their projects to support primary kids with OOo http://www.theingots.org/community/blog Taken a while but we are now getting quite a lot of new OOo users in schools. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Website Upgrade Marketing Input
On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 18:57 +1100, André Wyrwa wrote: Hei, On Sat, 2007-12-15 at 22:00 -0800, Mihai Mazilu wrote: Don't fight the change. Use it to your advantage. OpenOffice.org I can already see us ending up with a page that sais less about what OOo is than the current one. ;-) Please, please, please, can we put all the nifty, catchy, marketingy phrasing AFTER the primary objective of telling people what it is we are talking about? Please? Please? +1 About the action statements...i'm warming up, slightly. ;-) Maybe...would it be possible to include such info as asked for above into the action statements?...say rather I'm looking for a software solution for all my office tasks. Or a question. Did you know you can freely and legally download all the software you need to run your office? than I want to learn more about OpenOffice.org. ? André. PS: Please? Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Next Marketing Campaign
On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 17:45 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: We need to come up with a campaign aimed at an 18 - 24 yr old demographic with best punch for a limited budget. The idea is to be ready with a pitch when or if further funds become available.in the next quarter. I agree with Graham in regards to getting in on the new school year. One particular focus for Australia in particular is based on a new government coming in and putting forward new education policies for the coming years. A number of open source groups are combining their focus on this potential market at the moment, both at the government level and at the school level. It is currently aimed at primary and high school level, The advantage of doing this is that if you hit an element of mainstream IT education and have a compelling argument to get it into the curriculum it will affect every person in the target group. FE and HE are strategically more difficult because the courses are specialist and fragmented into different departments. If you target eg computer science, it's a very much smaller number of people than the 5-16 school population. I am unaware of a push toward the university market, but I am sure it will be complemented nicely with the overall campaign direction. Of course if you hit all 16 year olds, in a couple of years they will all be at university. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Next Marketing Campaign
On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 20:56 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: On 03/12/2007, at 7:58 PM, Ian Lynch wrote: On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 17:45 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: We need to come up with a campaign aimed at an 18 - 24 yr old demographic with best punch for a limited budget. The idea is to be ready with a pitch when or if further funds become available.in the next quarter. I agree with Graham in regards to getting in on the new school year. One particular focus for Australia in particular is based on a new government coming in and putting forward new education policies for the coming years. A number of open source groups are combining their focus on this potential market at the moment, both at the government level and at the school level. It is currently aimed at primary and high school level, The advantage of doing this is that if you hit an element of mainstream IT education and have a compelling argument to get it into the curriculum it will affect every person in the target group. FE and HE are strategically more difficult because the courses are specialist and fragmented into different departments. If you target eg computer science, it's a very much smaller number of people than the 5-16 school population. Agreed, but in these levels the computers are not used just for computer science, but also maths, spelling, art etc. This means that you have to have a solution to address the bigger area. Yes, in schools nearly all teach general IT courses to all the students at some point so that is the place to reach the biggest market - English or maths would do too but the teachers are likely to give office software less of a priority in those subjects. Of course this is true, but unfortunately they don't decide what software the university uses or teaches. Doesn't really matter if they personally use OOo - and if 90% of students were doing that it's likely to affect the university decision making. Its going to be very hard to get a whole university to switch to OOo from the top down. Quite often departments can make individual procurement decisions so here at Birmingham the comp sci department use FOSS extensively but the rest of the uni doesn't. If they are smart enough, they can work within the confines e.g. OOo vs MS Office documents etc, but if the university wants to teach MS Visual Basic, then no matter how many Linux stations they use, they cannot convince the university of its value. I think it's a lot easier to get 16 year olds in large numbers using OOo than to try and get Unis to change technologies such that it has the same effect on take up. I think if we can provide an environment that works on both Linux and Windows (and Mac as well) then the schools will soon realise that they don't need to be forced into one operating system. This can be done now for a range of applications as seen in the OpenCD project which provides many applications that work across the platforms and are suitable for school use. The added advantage FLOSS provides is that you can give the applications to the students for use at home, for their parents to use, their churches etc. Rather than being forced to use what the students have at home. Agreed, but getting them to know and understand this exists is also none trivial. Obvious to us but not obvious to the people in control and to most of them fairly low down on their list of priorities. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Next Marketing Campaign
On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 21:38 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: On 03/12/2007, at 9:22 PM, Ian Lynch wrote: On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 20:56 +1100, Jonathon Coombes wrote: On 03/12/2007, at 7:58 PM, Ian Lynch wrote: SNIP! Agreed, but in these levels the computers are not used just for computer science, but also maths, spelling, art etc. This means that you have to have a solution to address the bigger area. Yes, in schools nearly all teach general IT courses to all the students at some point so that is the place to reach the biggest market - English or maths would do too but the teachers are likely to give office software less of a priority in those subjects. Right, but IT is rather specific areas of application, some years may not even cover office applications. You only need one that does - that will hit everyone and after that it's use in any case. But then I think the argument is stronger to go for open systems and open standards rather than particular apps. OOo will get taken up as a natural consequence of that in any case. If we look at solutions based around a range of FLOSS software, I think that we cover a much wider audience than just the IT courses. I agree with range of apps, but try going into schools and see the none IT teachers glaze over when you talk about issues like open standards. You have to hit the people likely to influence them first and to an extent that is the students. There is software out there for all courses and this takes away the influence of what particular platform is required. Of course this is true, but unfortunately they don't decide what software the university uses or teaches. Doesn't really matter if they personally use OOo - and if 90% of students were doing that it's likely to affect the university decision making. Its going to be very hard to get a whole university to switch to OOo from the top down. Quite often departments can make individual procurement decisions so here at Birmingham the comp sci department use FOSS extensively but the rest of the uni doesn't. Obviously the universities of there are very different to the ones in Australia. :) Here you don't get a choice, no matter how many people want it, it is the choice of the lecturer or faculty as to what you are taught and what is utilised. Maybe after a few years of hearing where is OOo? all the time, they might start thinking about looking into it, but that is not what makes it happen. I agree that different departments can use different software, and often the comp sci areas are more open to FOSS, but I have seen universities that are totally Microsoft in the comp sci and accepting of FOSS in the maths and science areas? So it is often the people in charge who make the final decision, not the masses in this sense. Quite so, but FOSS is a grass roots phenomenon, those in charge won't change without a lot of obvious grass roots support because it's too risky so you need a combination of both factors. If they are smart enough, they can work within the confines e.g. OOo vs MS Office documents etc, but if the university wants to teach MS Visual Basic, then no matter how many Linux stations they use, they cannot convince the university of its value. I think it's a lot easier to get 16 year olds in large numbers using OOo than to try and get Unis to change technologies such that it has the same effect on take up. I think it would be great to see it happen, but I think you are swimming upstream. It is not that it is impossible, but it seems very difficult to achieve. Well so far we have 55 paying schools in the UK and another 50 in the pipeline and 3 EU projects started or close to it. People are now cold calling us as the word of mouth gets round. I think the opposite is true from swimming upstream. Now we have full government accreditation, people are coming to us. It's taken 4 years of graft and planning and probably around 500k in investment. If it was easy, it would have been done by now. I think getting them to know it exists is the easy part - they can see this through Internet, promotions, conferences etc. Try going into schools and talking to teachers. You will find even people in technical departments that haven't heard of OOo - I came across such a person only on Friday. It's improving but still a long way from universal. The hard part is trying to get them to understand why it is beneficial for them to use it, even if it requires a small amount of change. And that requires building those things into the mainstream curriculum and giving all a reason for studying it. QED. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales
Re: [Marketing] Two for the price of one
On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 08:28 +1300, Graham Lauder wrote: On Tuesday 04 December 2007 08:22:41 Lars Noodén wrote: Many home users and even businesses may not realize that they can have OOo installed along side any existing office suites. -Lars Hmmm, interesting concept, I like it Being non exclusive, side by side comparison for nothing One gets old while the other upgrades constantly for free Deserves some more thought. Portableapps.com and run from a USB drive. Kids like swapping gadgets. If they haven't disabled the USB ports on the computers at school they can also then run ooo at school without installing anything. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Google Highly Open Participation Contest
On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 15:26 -0600, Alexandro Colorado wrote: I wonder if anyone from the Marketing team has aproached Google so that OOo can participate in this program. We currently need high schoolers to get introduced to the OpenOffice.org community and I think we should take as much of what is out there. I was at the specialist schools conference last couple of days here in the UK. (RM biggest education IT supplier in the UK) expect to sell 250,000 ASUS EEEPCs to UK education next year and that runs Linux and OOo. I talked to guy from a company selling engineering products to schools and told him how to get OOo for a new laptop hew as about to buy. Stll people even in technical areas that haven't heard of OOo. BECTA is financing an open source viewer for interactive whiteboards as a result of a suggestion I made 2 years ago so slowly the FOSS message is filtering through which makes the environment easier for OOo. One of the things we show learners how to do for the Gold INGOT is to use Portable Apps from USB pendrives which again introduces OOo to students when some schools simply won't install on their school networks. On the general INGOT front, we got a lot of interest that should double the number of schools in the next few months (we are now over 50 paying institutions from primary to adult education). The Times Educational Supplement is doing another INGOT article focused on a School in Blackburn that just got an outstanding inspection report and was the first to get the government accredited versions of the INGOT certificates. We have just had the Comenius project finally approved for EU and 2 much larger European projects in planning that should get more than a million Euros of investment in. Google Highly Open Participation Contest is one of this chances that we are not participating. Can we get some traction to get on board? If there is interest in doing anything jointly I'm happy to cooperate. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Marketing] Vehicle for OOo into education
http://ltsblogs.org.uk/connected/2007/11/22/connected-live-video-010-easy-eeepc/#comment-830 Bit about OOo is about halfway in. RM is marketing this to UK schools and they are in 80% of primary. I need to do a deal with them where we give one of these free to every school that becomes an INGOT centre :-) This and OLPC could be the beginning of the end of conventional desktop PCs in schools, particularly primary and that would be more than 50% of the market. I can see educational apps being ported to the web and Linux as a direct result of these coming to the market. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Your Otto needs you...
On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 20:07 +0100, Florian Effenberger wrote: Hi John, Continuing the theme of attracting developers ... why don't we just advertise for them? I like that idea. It is humorous and eye-catching! On the topic of Otto We have Ottos club at www.theINGOTs.org/Ottos_club Java script puzzles for kids doing the entry level INGOT certificates. We started a section just yesterday for primary children on the community site which will be focussed on Otto. http://www.theingots.org/community/node/1103 We have about 1000 learners registered on the community site now increasing each week. All are researching open source projects or learning to produce open resources or services. Moodle courses to teach about open systems and open standards at http://theingots.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=9 http://theingots.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=4 Just need to scroll down to activities. We'll be gradually adding to these resources and they are all CC licensed so anyone can use them. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] OO - Online Marketing
On Sun, 2007-11-18 at 03:28 -0800, Gianluigi Cuccureddu wrote: When there are lots of search queries regarding Microsoft problems, OO can advertise on these to get at least branding and brand recognition, these keywords aren't pricy, lots of coverage and a positive approach whenever a user is looking for a problem or help. With a good landingpage, OO should be able to at least influence the mental perceive (un)consiouccely. Hi Gianluigi, That sounds like a good idea. Snag is it depends on money and even small requirements in that respect can be show stoppers as there is no budget specifically allocated to support the marketing plan. Just recently there was money available from Sun for marketing but AFAIK there has been no particular effort to link this specifically to the marketing plan or delivering against specific targets in the plan. I know that might seem bizarre in terms of conventional management practice, but that's the way it is. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Otto Overlays
http://rootcoffee.blogspot.com/2007/11/race-to-save-mexico-flood-victims.html These were just rough drafts, I wouldn't do any stretching on a finished image 8^). Otto could be smaller? (maybe a lot smaller?). I also thought of having him stand beside the screenshot. I'll do some more (and I'll keep trying to learn how to draw seagull hands 8^) and get them posted... Randy Hands are important. The original Otto caused quite a stir because the Ok gesture is apparently very rude in Brazil! Probably generated more publicity than Otto himself though ;-) Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] OpenDocument Foundation drops support for ODF
On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 16:41 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hello, Ian Lynch a écrit : On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 13:09 -0500, Sean W. O'Quin wrote: I think that we should put out some sort of counter press release stating that Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with OpenOffice.org as this story has now been picked up by Slashdot and there may be a great deal of confusion as to what is really going on. From what I read of the Slashdot thread, the OD Foundation was exposed for its lack of real substance. Putting out a press release has the danger of making it seem more important than it really is. Ian I for one would agree with Ian here (everything happens). Regardless of the technical expertise of the OD Foundation, I believe they've been sending the wrong message. But I wish them good luck, because they may be up to something interesting. Yes, its just not odf by definition so their web site just seems a bit out of date. Wrt to the Fellowship, I'd be cautious of calling it the grassroots Well the people in the OD Fellowship are generally individuals rather than companies or organisations whereas the members of the ODF Alliance are organisations. Its just a way of drawing a distinction between different groups that are supporting ODF in different ways. organization on ODF. Let's avoid labeling this or that group in these ways, as there are others out there. For instance my name is quoted as one of the co-authors of ODF 1.1, but I don't call myself the author of ODF (if I were to do that we all would have a good laugh I guess). No, but you would be reasonable in calling yourself an author of that document. I'm happy to use the indefinite article rather than the definite if people can show me another group that is specifically focused on ODF. OOo is a community focused on a product that uses ODF and as such will contribute to its development but that is coming from a rather different focus. Apart from the OD Fellowship I'm just not aware of any other group of individuals specifically focused ODF in general rather than applications that use it. I'm quite happy to be corrected if there is another such group and I'd be interested to make contact with them. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [Marketing] OpenDocument Foundation drops support for ODF
On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 13:09 -0500, Sean W. O'Quin wrote: I think that we should put out some sort of counter press release stating that Open Document Foundation has nothing to do with OpenOffice.org as this story has now been picked up by Slashdot and there may be a great deal of confusion as to what is really going on. From what I read of the Slashdot thread, the OD Foundation was exposed for its lack of real substance. Putting out a press release has the danger of making it seem more important than it really is. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] OpenDocument Foundation drops support for ODF
On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 15:04 -0700, RJ Gilson wrote: --- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Open Document Foundation is just a title. Its nothing to do with OOo... If they're not related to OOo, how can they be using the gulls bug and the wire gulls in the header on their website? Perhaps because no-one thought to protect that intellectual property ;-) Has anyone asked them to remove it? Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Microsoft licensing in Schools A BBC Report
On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 20:00 -0500, Sean W. O'Quin wrote: Notable quotes from Becta - British Educational Communications and Technology Agency on their recent recommendation against Vista and Microsoft Office for Britain's education system. Becta's advice to schools considering moving to Microsoft's School Agreement subscription licensing model is that they should not do so. It reminds schools they are legally obliged to have licensed software, but suggests they use instead what is known as perpetual licensing. This gives the permanent right to use the software and requires no ongoing payments beyond the purchase price. The advantage to schools in using a subscription service such as Microsoft's is that smaller, annual payments are involved rather than a larger one-off cost. But a spokesman for Becta said the problem was that Microsoft required schools to have licences for every PC in a school that might use its software, whether they were actually doing so or running something else. Some here might remember that I made a similar complaint to the UK Office of fair trading back in 2003. At the time it was difficult to gather the right sort of evidence and as an individual in a small business my resources are limited. Ironically the MS monopoly is so all encompassing when you ask people about machines running no MS software they don't know there is an option. Unless they are well informed, they don't give the right answers. This is changing and so the BECTA (who have the weight of government backing) complaint is probably timed well. The OFT didn't rule one way or the other on my original complaint but left the file open. Since then Norway has successfully renegotiated schools agreement without the requirement to pay for machines running no MS software using their competition law. Norway is not an EU member but the UK is so if the UK gets the same concession as Norway it will have to apply throughout the EU. In addition, if governments judge MSSA to be unlawful there should be more fines. I have resubmitted my original complaint with some significant additional evidence. If MSSA is judged to be illegal there would be good grounds for compensation. Its been around a long time and anyone trying to get eg GNU/Linux or OpenOffice.org into schools has a strong argument that it has damaged their business. If anyone in a business in an EU member state has evidence of this drop me an E-mail. The sort of thing needed is a school that has said something like We liked your ideas about using OOo (or GNU Linux) but we are using MSSA and it will be too expensive to make that sort of change In a previous report, Becta said primary schools could typically save up to 50% and secondary schools more than 20% of their ICT costs if they switched to what is known as open source software. In its complaint it also identifies potential difficulties for schools, pupils and parents who wish to use alternatives to Microsoft's Office suite, such as Open Office or Star Office, because they may not be compatible. Which is more pressure on MS to support true interoperability through the take up and support of ODF. Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7063716. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] HiPath OpenOffice
On Tue, 2007-10-30 at 22:17 +, jonathon wrote: Ian wrote: I realize that trademark registration is expensive. Not that expensive. IIRC it was about £250 ($500) to trademark the For one country about £250. Multiply that by 244 and you are looking at roughly 61,000 pounds. Not as much as I thought it would be. (I'm quoting Wikipedia for the number of countries, so that figure is probably wrong.) So just register it in the G8 countries to start with. That would make it very difficult for anyone to do much and it would only cost £2k. So in the whole scheme of things trademarking OOo in the G8 countries is a negligible cost compared to the salaries of the developers, community manager and Assuming that other countries charge roughly the same amount, you're looking at the cost of three or four employees, for trademark protection in every country of the world. But we don't really need to do it in every country to have a big effect. What we want is maximum effect for minimum cost. Even just registering in the USA would make a big difference. [Note to self: construct list of countries, with amount to register trademark, and process by which that can be done.] Interesting idea. What name would be suitable? Freedom office, perhaps? or the People's Office? In the US, People's Office sounds like a communist plot. Freedom Office might work, but suffers from association with freedom fries I'd like to retain the OOo designation, but not sure how. Oooh might be a little too out of place for a corporate environment. I was thinking of something in Esperanto, Interlingua, or one of the other conlangs would be a good choice. Perhaps toko tomo pali. (Wondering how Sonja Kisa would react if that were to be the name of the project.) It would also counter MS and its OOXML piracy of the name. That is part of the idea of worldwide trademark protection. Just the USA would have stopped MS if someone had had the foresight to do it. Quite amazing given all the paranoia with Sun legal in dealing with the OOo web site for example. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] HiPath OpenOffice
On Sat, 2007-10-27 at 20:16 +, jonathon wrote: Sharud wrote: As it is confusing with name OpenOffice , therefore we should raise this issue. It is too late now, but * OpenOffice.org should have been trademarked in at least every major country, prior to being released; * OpenOffice should have been trademarked in countries in which it was not already a trademark; * The OOo logos should have been trademarked, prior to release; I realize that trademark registration is expensive. Not that expensive. IIRC it was about £250 ($500) to trademark the INGOTs and The Learning Machine in the UK. So in the whole scheme of things trademarking OOo in the G8 countries is a negligible cost compared to the salaries of the developers, community manager and web site hosting etc. Without, there will eventually come a point where OOo will be legally required to/forced to change names, because the usage by OOo is a trademark infringement. (What is the current number of countries where the OOo L10N team has to use a name other than OOo when distributing it, because of the trademark infringement.) The other option is to rename OOo now, and trademark the new name in at least the major countries of the world, prior to the release of the new version with the new name. Interesting idea. What name would be suitable? Freedom office, perhaps? or the People's Office? It would also counter MS and its OOXML piracy of the name. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Re: Marketshare Memes (was Interesting study about price sensitivity of students)
On Fri, 2007-10-12 at 18:50 -0700, NoOp wrote: That said, the largest stumbling block to OOo's lack of market share isn't price, file compatibility, or other issues raised in the article. Instead it's the continued lack of a proper support staff and ease of upgrades/updates. Yes, if the components could be downloaded separately in 20 meg each with automatic updates to new versions a lot more people would use it. Key people are aware of it. Unfortunately its a very big job to change things. 0) They don't know it exists or if they do they don't really know how powerful it is and anyway their friend gives them a pirate copy of MS Office. 1) They've used it all of their school lives and it's generally installed already on their computer, 2) the school only supports MS doesn't want to deal with OOo because MS is what their techs know, Which is why you need a strategy based on education professional knowledge, not selling head to head against MS. Make it part of the curriculum and give educational reasons to use the software that rumps the mechanistic use of one application. http://theingots.org/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=trueid=136 http://theingots.org/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=trueid=33 3) when they do use OOo there is no formal tech support (even with StarOffice this is a problem) and the website is mind-boggling in trying to find help even for experienced users. Hence they may resort to the users mail list who's responses are from other users a few steady user volunteers like myself, Quite a few of us have spent time supporting the users list. Its a valuable job but there are also many other ways of deploying time and best matching it to expertise. 4) they simply don't have time, nor wish to deal with alternatives. They may try it once or twice, but the bottom line is if an 18-21 year old in college is working on something, they simply don't want to deal with an alternative, be it free or otherwise. They want something that is the norm, that their school professors require, that they don't have to send an email to a users mail list to get help if the install craps out, and just works. After all, many of them were sent off to college with a new laptop in the last minute 'send the kid to school' rush, and in most cases that laptop included MS Office. If not they can get the student version for about $59 USD from MS. So why bother? *So why bother?* Perhaps OOo should revive the education library projects that seem to have been dropped by the wayside. Anyone here visited the Libraries and Public Administrations Project lately? I used to lead the education project. To revive it you need people with the expertise and contacts in those worlds willing to put time and effort into it. They are hardly likely to do that when instead of helping them, obstacles and discouragement are the reward. http://marketing.openoffice.org/pa/ or how about: http://marketing.openoffice.org/education/schools/ or http://marketing.openoffice.org/education/schools/univs/index.html how about: http://education.openoffice.org/ Can anyone make sense of any of those web pages (other than they are basically stale and serve no purpose any longer?)? Ever thought about why? Hint: Read your post that implies those that made some effort to try and get better effect from the resources being made available are a bunch of nutters. Here, try this: http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=libraries If OOo want to fix the Marketshare issue mentioned in the article, then OOo marketing need to forgo the silly 'give a OOo t-shirt to a poor kid' thought and go back into mainstream library and education markets. If kids grow up with OOo in the classroom they *will* use it into their college years. So what do *you* suggest should be done? I have spent 4 years setting up a UK government accredited awarding body with open systems qualifications and a strategy to get them into schools around the world which appears to be working. Its not a quick fix, its a 10 year strategy. The company is now sustainable from its income with projects in South Africa funded by Shuttleworth and others with partners across Europe. We will produce an ever-increasing range of free learning resources from this income and extend the valued qualifications backed by the British Government (and other governments in due course) to sustain development. All this despite rather than because of people like you telling me I'm some sort of nutter or worse. Ironically, Sun with StarOffice has made *no* dent in the education/library markets despite the fact that SO is basically *free* to students and educational institutions. Mainly because Sun are just as clueless about marketing to schools as most others who haven't been in that culture professionally. Its specialist stuff, just as writing code for OOo is specialist stuff. I probably no more about writing code
Re: [Marketing] Merchandising from Sun funds
On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 18:38 -0700, RJ Gilson wrote: Hi everybody, I'm very new here (mostly an 'art list guy), but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents worth 8^) Wouldn't it be easier to track if people had to send something in to get a free CD? Lke a coupon on snack food items (Frito Lay, Hershey, Nabisco), box top (Kellogs, Little Debbie) or bottle top (Pepsico, Coke, Snapple). Then you'd know that the Cds were being used. Maybe office supply type things would work too, like Bic pens, Logitech computer accessories, printer paper (can't think of any companies for that one 8^) etc. Just a thought... Good ideas. Send coupons to get portable office on a pen drive perhaps. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Marketshare Memes blog post
On Fri, 2007-10-12 at 07:15 -0700, Benjamin Horst wrote: I've converted my email of this morning into a blog post on the subject. Comments and discussion are very welcome there: also, please Digg the post to see how quickly we can start this meme! Dugg http://www.digg.com/software/The_Real_Market_Share_Stats_of_MS_Office_versus_the_rest Please Digg this link and pass to as many as possible. Its one way we can make a marketing difference without any money! Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Merchandising from Sun funds
On Fri, 2007-10-12 at 02:58 +1300, Graham Lauder wrote: We are tossing a very small stone in a very large pond I would stick with just the T-Shirts, but again that would depend on our targets. Let's first define our demographic Decide locations Establish the message we want to deliver Figure out how best to measure the success of the campaign Then decide what type of merchandise delivers the message best to our proposed target audience while delivering a measurable result. Why not give them to a group of children who would really benefit eg in a developing country. OOo community puts shirts on the backs of 2000 children! Take a photograph and then try and get that photograph into the mainstream press. That way the kids benefit and more people see the OOo name than would just from a T shirt promotion. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Merchandising from Sun funds
On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 15:34 +, andylockran wrote: I like the Kellogg's idea for the CDs - has it been raised before - and if so - what were the pros/cons? It did come up several years ago. Its still a good idea but needs someone who can get to the right people in the company. Sun might be able to facilitate this big company to big company. Does Sun do the IT for any of thee? Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Merchandising from Sun funds
On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 17:54 +0200, CTVN wrote: putting it in cereal boxes is really an excellent way to get it to the attention of people as average jane/joe sees it in the supermarket. this is a top spot and worth lot. regarding the actual use of the cd, perhaps its not that effective as people buy cereal to eat and not to install a computer software. so from a usage perspective, CDs would perhaps better be used in context with education. to stimulate actual use of the CD in the cereal boxes, additions of CC music or videos might be something (http://www.linuxelectrons.com/news/linux/11085/fedora-creative-commons-team-deliver-livecontent-distribution) Box tokens. Collect 1000 box tokens and your school gets a free computer (Or Sunray for their thin client Global Desktop network). Kids collect the tokens and take them into school. School puts them together and claims its computer. LiveCDs running portable apps would be one way of them trying things out so they didn't need to install anything. Run from the CD. If you like it click install. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Merchandising from Sun funds
On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 17:14 +, andylockran wrote: So the main thing now is strategy. IMHO we would be better finding a big supplier and in-effect outsourcing the box tokens to them. However, I'm sure they'll want to know the benefit to them. I suppose if we say 1,000 gets you a computer for the school - and 10,000 gets a thin-client cluster then that'd work.. but we've branched the idea away from OOo on CD. (and from OOo t-shirts). I think the box token idea is good - but for OOo specifially, I think the CD approach would work better. There are already 'computers for schools' projects - and our message (in my opinion) should be re-use, rather than buy new. Computers could come pre-installed with OpenOffice. They could be for example, Asus's new machine http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/09/rm_asus_launches_minibook/ or a One laptop per child machine. The thing is that the supermarket vouchers for school IT equipment is known to be successful so its backing a winner. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Important news regarding the marketing campagin
On Wed, 2007-10-10 at 13:32 +1300, Graham wrote: Hi Louis, Frankly I think we're going about this the wrong way. What the project needs to do is to come up with a campaign. Costs, targets, goals and methodologies and then present that to all the corporate partners for a contribution to a war chest. The positive that came out of this debacle is at least we know now that there is a marketing budget to be had. I have always believed that the strength of OOo is in it's mix between community and corporate. We need to leverage that strength. At the moment we're not, the community gets dragged around like the baby of the family: Sit in the back seat, shutup and don't annoy the adults cos we know best. We need to be more proactive I don't think you will solve these issues until there is an OOo foundation independent of particular companies. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Return to the marketing
On Wed, 2007-09-26 at 18:12 -0500, Alexandro Colorado wrote: Also the need of more non profit entities in countries so that openoffice.org scale to large deployments. basically we are finding that OOo vendors hav e a hard time justifiying the product and the brand. Not sure why not for profits will do that any better than profit making companies. Basically a not for profit still needs a revenue source to cover operating costs. It needs business models that are not based on selling software licenses. I did some training yesterday not specifically related to OOo but OOo went down very well with the teachers involved when I showed them how to get it and why it would be useful to them. I get paid for doing that training so its sustainable. Hi Ian, you miss the point here, the problem is not being a for profit or not for profit. What the governments need is a legal entity of OpenOffice.org. That makes more sense. The companies that offer the services will use OpenOffice.org and generate a profit, but the actual OpenOffice.org 'name holder' should be legally stablish in the country. Needs a foundation in each country then. I'm not holding my breath :-) In fact a company that is stable offering to support it is probably good enough. Moodle seems OK in this respect and has 50% foorhold in the UK FE market. In fact i expect it to sweep theough the secondary sector too. I can't see any economic reason for a system builder installing MS Works on a computer instead of OOo unless M$ is actually paying them to do it. Legally a lot of things apartently doesn't make sense until you get contracts in the mix. For example the OOXML was a clear example when OOo members legally couldn't represent OOo because legally OOo doesn't exist like Microsoft does. So how come Dell can put Ubuntu (with OOo in its machines and Lenovo is considering doing it for laptops?) Canonical - so as long as you have some stable company pulling things together it doesn't seem too important how the individual products are backed. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Return to the marketing
On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 01:28 -0500, Alexandro Colorado wrote: On Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:22:49 -0500, Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So how come Dell can put Ubuntu (with OOo in its machines and Lenovo is considering doing it for laptops?) Canonical - so as long as you have some stable company pulling things together it doesn't seem too important how the individual products are backed. Ian Governments will sign a contract with Dell UK. In fact in UK education individual schools decide what computers to buy and that is also the case in quite a number of places. Centralise procurement is not at all the whole market. Dell in itself is the one to deal with Canonical.com or Ubuntu.org but it really depends how the negotiations where handled and what is the legal requirements on each country. Example, mexico for a while required the vendor to produce the machines in the country. That is one of the reason why Apple couldn't sell computers for a long time. But why would that limit OOo because it isn't a company? Just get any clone manufacturer to install it when they build the machine in Mexico. Its more about persuading OEMs to pre-install OOo. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Return to the marketing
On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 08:44 +0200, Erwin Tenhumberg wrote: I can't see any economic reason for a system builder installing MS Works on a computer instead of OOo unless M$ is actually paying them to do it. System builders might not get money for installing MS Works, but they might get money (e.g. via revenue sharing) from selling upgrades to the full MS Office product. That's more plausible although you'd think that if the customer wanted and could afford MS Office they would get it from the outset. If they start using Works they do have an upgrade issue because its not that easy to upgrade works files to MS office files - probably easier going OOo to MSO. Maybe we should do a deal with MS to get them to give a discount on MSO for upgrading from OOo pre-installed so there is a reason for system builders to install OOo to get a discount :-) Worth the gamble because once using it how many people would swap OOo for MSO? MS might just be arrogant enough to believe they would ;-) Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [Marketing] Return to the marketing
On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 13:21 -0500, Sean W. O'Quin wrote: Ian... Although a nice concept, I do not seeing MSFT in any deals or agreements with open source vendors especially any that deal with their 2 holy grails into a enterprise the MSFT O/S or MSFT Office. It was a bit of a joke, hence the smilies :-) What about a link to the OpenOffice download on the desktop as a first pass? I think OEM's would be much more receptive to this first step. -Original Message- From: Ian Lynch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 1:07 PM To: dev@marketing.openoffice.org Subject: Re: [Marketing] Return to the marketing On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 08:44 +0200, Erwin Tenhumberg wrote: I can't see any economic reason for a system builder installing MS Works on a computer instead of OOo unless M$ is actually paying them to do it. System builders might not get money for installing MS Works, but they might get money (e.g. via revenue sharing) from selling upgrades to the full MS Office product. That's more plausible although you'd think that if the customer wanted and could afford MS Office they would get it from the outset. If they start using Works they do have an upgrade issue because its not that easy to upgrade works files to MS office files - probably easier going OOo to MSO. Maybe we should do a deal with MS to get them to give a discount on MSO for upgrading from OOo pre-installed so there is a reason for system builders to install OOo to get a discount :-) Worth the gamble because once using it how many people would swap OOo for MSO? MS might just be arrogant enough to believe they would ;-) Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Return to the marketing
On Wed, 2007-09-26 at 17:31 -0500, Alexandro Colorado wrote: On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:12:27 -0500, Graham Lauder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Welcome back to everybody after what looked like a very successful conference. I'd like to return focus to the Marketing campaign proposals Was anything discussed at the conference, with regard to the campaign, that those of us who couldn't attend should know about. Is there a conference page somewhere where there are minutes of the meetings Cheers GL At least at the MarCon level there were success stories and failure ones from the Vendors such as Dell. There were other topics about 'how to market to web 2.0' in which is a whole lifestyle from the design to the funny logos to the viral nature of the imeplementations. Things like the OOo facebook group, more Youtube Videos and more presence on things like stumble upon, digg, youtube, slideshare, mugshot and so on. Maybe OOo needs to sweep through second life and establish itself as the virtual world standard ;-) Also the need of more non profit entities in countries so that openoffice.org scale to large deployments. basically we are finding that OOo vendors hav e a hard time justifiying the product and the brand. Not sure why not for profits will do that any better than profit making companies. Basically a not for profit still needs a revenue source to cover operating costs. It needs business models that are not based on selling software licenses. I did some training yesterday not specifically related to OOo but OOo went down very well with the teachers involved when I showed them how to get it and why it would be useful to them. I get paid for doing that training so its sustainable. I can't see any economic reason for a system builder installing MS Works on a computer instead of OOo unless M$ is actually paying them to do it. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Marketing] [Fwd: OOXML Digg]
-- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. ---BeginMessage--- http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/mgmt/74C665EDA37CB6F0CC2573560004F188 Please digg and circulate. OOXML is a pointless standard because even MS will not follow it. ODF is the only option. Criticise it sure, but then adopt it and work to improve it. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. ___ OSC-Members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bringing Open Source software to the Public Sector To change subscription options, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---End Message--- - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Re: [marketing-events] Fwd: Call For Presentations - SCALE 6x
On Fri, 2007-09-14 at 18:19 +1000, Jean Hollis Weber wrote: Of particular interest, given the marketing priorities we've identified for OOo2.3, is this: ... newly added for SCALE 6X is a Friday conference on education: “Open Source in Education” which focuses on opportunities for Open Source in the field of education. Not sure about the US, but Open Source in education here in the UK is getting a higher and higher political profile. Some of this is down to Moodle. Moodle introduces teachers to Open Source so targeting Moodle users with OOo would be likely to get some traction. Maybe someone could find out about Moodle take up in US schools and use this as an in to spread Open Source wider. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Re: [documentation-dev] Article: Open-source strategy: Documentation = dollars
On Fri, 2007-09-14 at 12:41 +0200, Frank Peters wrote: Jean Hollis Weber wrote: Interesting article: Open-source strategy: Documentation = dollars, by Matt Asay http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9774567-16.html Here is a quote from the article: People don't visit a software company's website to read about the executives. They visit the website to get information on the software. If your website is light on that information, you're killing sales, especially in an open-source software company. If only our sales people would understand that ;-) I think it's especially relevant to the OOo website. IMO the changes Frank has made to the Documentation Project's first page (and his addition of the Getting Help page) have helped greatly in making the Docs pages more useful for users. However, I still have issues with the emphasis on the first page of the main OOo website. You are not alone. We need more focus on the user. +1. The difficulty for a web site appealing to a wide range of different interests is that it can't simultaneously satisfy them all. However, that isn't a reason for satisfying none of them! A big prominent download button is a no brainer but after that what would a casual user want to know as opposed to established community members? The New User link is the most important one on the page if we want new blood. The information supplied there has two key issues to me. One is that its all too dense with nothing to catch the eye and interest. Do I really want to read through all that to find something I think is relevant to me? OpenOffice.org is both a fully-featured office suite compatible with leading office products, and a virtual community working through OpenOffice.org's numerous projects. The community comes together at www.openoffice.org to develop, support, and promote the use of OpenOffice.org. For information on joining the OpenOffice.org community, visit our Introduction page. Why not The OpenOffice.org Community is working to create the best possible office software for YOU! If you work in education, business or at home we can help and its entirely free. Link education, business and home to compelling reasons that would interest a casual reader further and try things out. Make the text much bigger and use some graphics and colour. Compare to say http://www.ubuntu.com/ for visual appeal. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Announcement: IBM Joins the OpenOffice.org Community
On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 08:21 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: On 2007-09-10, at 07:57 , Vitor Domingos wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 Finally! IBM's way to say we love ODF :) ... not, We love OpenOffice.org? :-) Why can't they love both? ;-) Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Announcement: IBM Joins the OpenOffice.org Community
On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 15:37 +0200, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Hi, Alexandro Colorado a écrit : On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:36:01 -0500, Lars Noodén [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: A Press Release was issued this morning to announce that IBM are joining the OOo community Great news! As a side, I hope this helps further bootstrap ODF uptake in other applications. Notes will be supporting it. -Lars Agree this is a very good news, however I dont see a realationship between both development lines. Notes adoption of ODF came from the merge of Workplace which was OOo 1.x modified. However this seems more like a consolidating move rather than diversification of applications. That said, I would love to see more indepth the 'server-side uptake' so that OOo can achieve the collaboration bits needed in the suite. Indeed. ODF and OOo are not correlated in terms of development, nor is the Lotus stack. But this is some very good news, and I think it's also an evidence that OOo is owned by Sun. I think you missed a not out there somewhere! The truth is, you have now many companies, including Sun, an important amount of community developers who are contributing to OOo. Welcome IBM! Wonder how long before Microsoft join the OOo community ;-) Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Announcement: IBM Joins the OpenOffice.org Community
On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 22:56 +0900, Kazunari Hirano wrote: Hi list, On 9/10/07, Charles-H. Schulz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Welcome IBM! Yes, Indeed! Please help me translate the very last sentence of the FAQ: ODF use dwarfs the use of OOXML. :) Can you use more words to explain what it means? A dwarf is a small person usually a genetic condition or lack of growth hormone so if you dwarf something you make it seem very small. So ODF use is far bigger than the current take up and use of OOXML. -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Announcement: IBM Joins the OpenOffice.org Community
On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 16:05 +0200, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: Wonder how long before Microsoft join the OOo community ;-) Oh, I bet this will be a delicious moment... Maybe Google and Oracle would be more likely sooner:-) Imagine Sun, IBM, Google and Oracle combining forces for an open office suite that could be desktop or web based, sleek code and a lot of brand raising. That would be good night vienna for proprietary code I think and the revenue diverted to other services and products so in the interest of any of these big players one would have thought. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Upcoming marketing campaign: Targets and design
On Sun, 2007-09-09 at 15:58 +1200, Graham Lauder wrote: It seems we were caught out a bit by SUN's generosity. For instance Aug 31 is the end of my financial year so I wasn't able to participate in the initial stages of the discussion. I think that probably holds true for a number of other people who have things outside the project that demand their attention and so can't contribute immediately. This is something that those who are gathering a salary from their OOo / Sun activities need to take into account. Many of us would absolutely love to be able focus 100% of our energies on OOo, but for obvious reasons that's not always possible. A couple of suggestions for next time: More time please, the longer the better, but at least four weeks, six would be better. I think more, eg 3-6 months. I have several deadlines this month so while I can do some things that I can either delegate or coordinate, if it requires a lot of physical time I just can't do it. For example there is no real time to coordinate anything for software freedom day as its only a few days away but if we had decided to do that 6 months ago I could probably have mobilised groups like OSC, SFUK, LuGS and ODF to do something specific in the UK. To co-ordinate large numbers of people is not necessarily massively time consuming but requires quite a long lead in time for the message to get round and consensus on decision making to happen. Have an RFP (Request for Proposals) process, Instead of having a mish mash of ideas coming from all directions. +1 For a worldwide campaign tho' it would be a rather expensive way of getting to people and definitely limits the numbers that you can interface with. I think the real merit is also to initiate programs that we can later efficiently exploit. First then we need to define _how_ we're going to exploit this later. We can't be expected to go after a moving target. What are these programmes and how can we efficiently exploit them later. That's the question. 80% online ads 20% merchandise isn't a plan Without a plan with a distinct objective then we are better to say to SUN Save your money for later and we'll come up with something really good instead of something thrown together at the last moment. Depends on how Sun budgets though and whose pot the money is coming from. Could be an under-spend they lose if not spent by a certain date. There should be ways round that though eg invoice from a stakeholder. In principle though having an advertising and promotion plan and then looking for sustainable ways of supporting it seems to be sensible. I would rather that we come up with definite plans to pitch, with concrete goals , budgets and campaign strategies as well as a benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of said campaign. And a strategy for making it sustainable rather than just a one off. CDs are reasonably cheap but even then we're probably looking at around US40c ea for 20,000 including pressing, printing and freight. Assuming local packaging of course. Getting them packaged in a sleeve at source considerably increases freight costs. It's better local in any case because they can then be printed with more relevant local info. Yes. That's always been my impression. Also, a cdrom is ephemeral. So is a usb drive. It will end up at the botom of a drawer because the software on it will get superceded and the drive will be too small very quickly but admittedly possibly not as fast as a cdrom. I'm waiting for the day when we'll be able to embed OOo onto a credit card sized usb readable device. Not that far away! I'm not sure about CDS or USBs. Its so easy to download and install stuff from the internet and most people we would target ie schools in Western economies have fast broadband. USB giveaways would probably be more useful in places where there is not so much broadband and the value of a USB flash drive is relatively higher. A better alternative in the west would be to get volunteers to sell USB drives for a small profit and send that back in to the centre to provide a sustainable sales budget. As far as T-Shirts are concerned, there is a local guy who has a machine that will produce 600 t-shirts an hour with a two colour print. I'll check to see what he charges. Great! Again, for local things, like t-shirts, cdroms, etc., it's important to have models available and contacts too, so that we can get these out to meritorious events, give them as gifts, say, or even make them available for purchase (yes, you read that right) from OOo or a designated site. Heh, Not surprisingly you'll get no argument from me on that one! :) I'd like to see every MarCon in the world running an ooogear.co.xx site in their local area. That is a good idea. Could be a little competition to see who could raise the most money from sales. Give them a
Re: [Marketing] Upcoming marketing campaign: Targets and design
On Sun, 2007-09-09 at 12:50 +0200, Florian Effenberger wrote: Hi, According to Florian's first mail he said online AND offline. So we're back to just online ads now. yes, this particular fact has changed. Sorry for the confusion. Many of us would absolutely love to be able focus 100% of our energies on OOo, but for obvious reasons that's not always possible. I agree, and I see the problem - it was a little bit short, and I myself have a lot of other things to do, that's why I remain so silent at the moment. Nontheless I hope we can get this project up and running. We've got a lot of creative minds here and could work together. I hope that in the future we can get more time for projects, I'll try to work on it. I absolutely agree that some more time and better planning will help in the future. As outlined in my first message, the fact that there is money available for us came very short-timed, also for myself. Is it possible to find out from Sun how this money was allocated, if it is a one off or if this type of thing is likely to happen again? Do they expect an evaluation of how the money was spent and an indication of the value it provided? any such information made generally available is going to help future planning. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Finalizing current Marketing Campaign
On Fri, 2007-09-07 at 14:40 +1200, Graham Lauder wrote: Times Educational Supplement? Cost depends on the size of the ad but it is likely to be less expensive to send a flyer to every school and ask them to display it on their staffroom noticeboards. A full page ad would cost several thousand Euros. What's the Neilsen Stats on TES Ian? No idea :-). It goes into every staffroom but a cynic would say that most people who read it are looking in the jobs section ;-) You made a good point about staff reading pamphlets. Cost per view may be better with TES if we can't guarantee the pamphlet will get to the notice board. Tis a hard one All I can say is that we had an article done on INGOTs a few months ago in the TES so it was in the IT section and it was not (To be honest if they had been two large secondary schools its arguably that it would have been worth buying an ad that did the same job) even an advertisement. I think we got 2 enquiries as a result. We have had full page adds in the Specialist Schools Magazine for several months and got very little back. In general word of mouth advertising through professional networking is much better. Schools are bombarded with so many ads, its very difficult to stand out. That is why the flyer I attached is focused on professional appeal, not just swap one office suite for another. Of course this flyer could be turned into a nice big poster or full page ad. All I'm saying really is that we need focused messages for focused markets. One way to do it might be to have a poster campaign ore something similar and then do a press release to the TES hoping they report on the campaign. That way we would get two for the price of one ;-) -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Upcoming marketing campaign: Targets and design
On Sat, 2007-09-08 at 01:02 +1200, Graham wrote: USB drives are a different kettle of fish. You might be able to find some supplier who happens to have a warehouse full of old obselete 128 mb drives that he'd be wiling to part with for $3 or $4 per unit for 1000, but that would be without printing and artwork, but you're probably looking at around the $10 mark for printed 256mb drives. I could track a definite price down if I had an idea of what sort of budget we're looking at. As far as T-Shirts are concerned, there is a local guy who has a machine that will produce 600 t-shirts an hour with a two colour print. I'll check to see what he charges. Maybe what we need is some sort of publicity stunt like getting a group of people to be donated free OOo T-shirts and then get the press interested to get photos beamed all over the world. When Hanson sponsored Britains first CTC for £1m it was seen as an altruistic act but their financial director told me it got them into the headlines of several national papers and with other publicitywas less expensive than advertising with the benefit of being seen to be associated with doing good for the community. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Upcoming marketing campaign: Targets and design
On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 23:24 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: Hi On 2007-09-06, at 06:59 , Ian Lynch wrote: On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 17:49 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: No reason not to focus on specific regions, especially if we are building for future grass-roots efforts. So, let's do it, and if it doesn't work for this particular quarter, we can likely use it some other time. I think we really need to act, especially now. I have attached a draft flyer to issue 15757. I saw, thanks. Haven't had time to look it over. Its not a work of art ;-) - More its the messages that are important to the particular audience. They provide reasons to install OOo in English schools irrespective of whether they already have MSO. It makes OOo professionally relevant rather than just another office suite. It could probably be improved visually by the art project but I think the messages are the best we can give. If this seems acceptable, I will find out what it will cost to send to 3500 secondary schools (ages 11-18). We could also send to primary schools - about 17,000 but that is more expensive and the NC levels cited are not really appropriate to that age group so we would need to modify things a bit. I'm anticipating that just sending the flyer will be the cost of postage and duplication. We have mailing list software with the addresses etc but there is the job of stuffing envelopes. I'm hoping we will get some FOSS volunteers to help with that. What is the mechanism for claiming costs? There is no clear mechanism for things like this. For the present campaign, we have to spend the money on merchandise, like USB keys, and, mostly, online ads; print things, like brochures, are not quite in the picture. That said, making these available for modification and distribution is a necessary step. I'd be interested to know the cost, however, as if not for this particular campaign, it will help in future ones. I'd also be curious if we could run online ads that do the same. Assuming we get help with labour, I'd budget about 50p - $1 per school based on the cost of postage and printing. We might get that down a bit eg by getting local sponsorship. If the flyer went with other materials from a firm specialising in mailshotting schools it might also be less expensive but then it would be in with other materials and more likely to get lost. If money has to go on merchandise, why not produce a war chest of merchandise that can be sold by volunteers at exhibitions. Then we recoup at least some money to buy more merchandise and so on. We easily sold OOo CDs at NEA for $1 each almost everyone bought one, so if you seeded production you would never be short of CDs at a show again because it would be self-sustaining. If its an education show, put the poster file on the CD with a read me asking them to display it in school. (Same with a USB key). Makes the money go further. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Upcoming marketing campaign: Targets and design
On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 17:49 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: No reason not to focus on specific regions, especially if we are building for future grass-roots efforts. So, let's do it, and if it doesn't work for this particular quarter, we can likely use it some other time. I think we really need to act, especially now. I have attached a draft flyer to issue 15757. It could probably be improved visually by the art project but I think the messages are the best we can give. If this seems acceptable, I will find out what it will cost to send to 3500 secondary schools (ages 11-18). We could also send to primary schools - about 17,000 but that is more expensive and the NC levels cited are not really appropriate to that age group so we would need to modify things a bit. I'm anticipating that just sending the flyer will be the cost of postage and duplication. We have mailing list software with the addresses etc but there is the job of stuffing envelopes. I'm hoping we will get some FOSS volunteers to help with that. What is the mechanism for claiming costs? I put John's E-mail address on - its probably best to have a named contact. Can put mine on too but I don't want any perceived conflict of interest. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Finalizing current Marketing Campaign
On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 17:36 +0200, Florian Effenberger wrote: Hello everyone, and first of all a big thank you to everyone involved in the constructive discussions! I see that a lot of great and interesting ideas have been brought up and now it's time to finalize the campaign in order to let it run. I think we should set two target audiences: - SMB, SOHO - educational area As of the slogans, there are quite a few good ones, but unfortunately, we should stick to one basic tagline. ;-) I like OpenOffice.org: Your Next Office Upgrade most, and I think we should stick to that. It must not be the final wording, but it should get into that area. Feel free to be creative, we can exchange words easily as long as ads are not printed/brought online. So, what's up to du currently: - We need to identify sites worth targetting at with advertisements. I've summed up some ideas from the list on the Wiki. Google ads are an option, social networks are another. School-related publications are a third. Who knows concrete names and maybe prices for the ads? Times Educational Supplement? Cost depends on the size of the ad but it is likely to be less expensive to send a flyer to every school and ask them to display it on their staffroom noticeboards. A full page ad would cost several thousand Euros. - We need to establish some design, and this is where I hope the art project gets in. Guys, be creative. :-) I have no concrete idea as of now (I'm no graphics guy), so I'm open up to everything. By the way, regarding USB drives and T-shirts, we're still checking things. Will get back to you regarding that as soon as possible. Thanks! Florian - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Upcoming marketing campaign: Targets and design
On Tue, 2007-09-04 at 22:41 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: Hi On 2007-09-04, at 12:25 , Ian Lynch wrote: big snip If you want a resource for teaching about open standards I have produced a Moodle course at http://theingots.org/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=trueid=30 Cool; I'll check it out. My interest in education centres on post- secondary--that's usually what I mean by the term--but thanks for the reminder. Really the course I did is aimed as much at the teachers as the students. They are probably a bit higher level than they need to be for the kids they target but the teacher can modify them appropriately. This is a great strength of creative commons in education. You can modify resource which are rarely just right for your particular teaching style or your particular students. So even in adult education they could be useful. We have a Further Education College just signed up and another coming to the next training. A big issue is the 1 million 17-24 year olds not in employment, education or full time training. They need low barrier courses and progression and the government is desperate to do something about them. As with all things on the INGOT site its creative commons licensed so you can use it, improve it etc. When I get more time I'll add to these things and eventually we will also get community contributions too. Great. but others have reasonably suggested business. So maybe concentrating the money on business would be best as we have at least something for education that is self-financing and should grow over time. I think it also depends on cost. And I'm hoping that all our campaigns can develop. What I really would like now is to have some mockups of ads we can review. So: Let's come up with: * Education (generic, but from primary through to university, so several models) What we really need is ads/actions targeted on particular needs. UK education is bombarded by advertising so it needs focus on perceived audience needs. For example, a quote form the UK national curriculum showing how making software comparisons by students are needed to reach the higher levels then a solution - download OOo (or send them a CD) and say this is a free resource to do the job just install on your network alongside MSO and give the students an assignment to make some comparisons. Of course this would only work in the UK. There are 3500 high schools so sending a CD to each one would probably only cost about 5 or 6k if we could drum up volunteers and probably OSA, Schoolforge and Lugs would help such a project. Sending them a flyer with the download address would be less expensive. I could design such a flyer targeted on UK education but it would probably not be appropriate in other countries. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Upcoming marketing campaign: Targets and design
On Mon, 2007-09-03 at 23:37 -0400, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: Florian has suggested some specific targets. Let's narrow it even further. My preference is education Just a bit of a tangent but might be of interest. Here is a message I got from a head of IT in a school this morning. I will be starting unit 3 of the gold ingot this week... we do not have open office, however we have just installed office 2007. I was thinking of getting pupils to create guides for specific 2007 software that could be used by primary schools to get them selves up tp speed. What do you think? My reply explained how to get OOo and why it would be better for students educationally to make comparisons of OOo and MSO for use by primary schools. His reply this is great, could you recommend any other standalone peices of open source software that could be easily installed on the network. So I think that can be chalked up as a win. Point is we have a reason for them to install OOo even if they have just installed MSO 2007 :-) Its taken some time but things are starting to take off and we have more than 40 schools paying INGOT academy subscriptions now and about 20 more in the immediate pipeline. UK government accreditation has made a massive difference. Shuttleworth project is going well in South Africa but that will take a bit longer because they are starting from further back and are currently going through the procedures for government approval. I have a bigger prospect that could finance us across Eastern Europe but even without it we should be able to focus the business entirely on INGOTs by the new year so the resources committed will increase and hopefully keep increasing. If you want a resource for teaching about open standards I have produced a Moodle course at http://theingots.org/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=trueid=30 As with all things on the INGOT site its creative commons licensed so you can use it, improve it etc. When I get more time I'll add to these things and eventually we will also get community contributions too. but others have reasonably suggested business. So maybe concentrating the money on business would be best as we have at least something for education that is self-financing and should grow over time. In that case, let's specify SOHO and SMB and thus have three sets of ads (content) and destinations (where they'll run). I'll meanwhile also ask my Sun colleagues to come up with prices of the standard ones, as well as some education ones. By no means does targeting sites exclude grassroots campaigns! Understood, more diversity is better. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
