[ILUG] AGM 2004

[Ronan Cunniffe]

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Lee Hosty wrote:

> Noirin Plunkett wrote:
>
> > Asterisk, and Brian Scanlan, who talked about the opportunities for
> > developing (and supporting) Open Source solutions for schools.
>
> And the promised surprise project was?

There is money sloshing towards providing broadband for schools.  HEAnet
is heavily involved in connecting all the bits, but their responsibility
ends at the router, but Brian's observation is that there is an
opportunity here to present what I think he termed "a standard Open
Source desktop" - he suggested a translation of Skolelinux as already
mostly set up for this.

There were various points raised:

1) Most school don't have any real IT infrastructure, and are not going to
take a leap in the dark.
2) Teachers talk to each other, so successful pilots are very, very
useful.
3) Schools are likely to prefer corporate support than volunteer - may shy
away from a project not backed long term by a "credible" support
organisation.

(I will repeat here what I offered at the meeting - when I tried to float
this idea, it was how-do-we-politely-say-no humming and hawing.  They
basically didn't believe: that a system would run without constant
maintenance; that volunteer support would be relied on; that the results
would allow them to do the ECDL.  I forgot to mention the ECDL thing at
the meeting, but it came up at the time)

Certainly, while that school has dropped off my radar, I would be
interested in contributing to a pilot project if another school was
looking for volunteers.

Ronan