A Linux Presentation Repository?

literate asks: "I just presented the third of three lectures advocating the use of Linux and Open Source software. The first two were at the Desktop Summit Conference and SCALE3X, Southern California Linux Expo where I presented on the subject of the use of Open Source Software in small schools. Last night I presented on the use of Open Source software to secure business communications for the monthly meeting of the Open Source Software for Business Peer Group of Tech Point Indiana's largest technology trade group. Linux & FLOSS advocacy is my way of giving back to the community. There were dozens of great presentations at both conferences, which made me wonder if it might be time for someone to start collecting the best presentations, and make them available for quality presenters so that they can leverage these incredible resources beyond the one or two uses they might otherwise have?"

"I'm not competent to start a such a thing, but I'd like to hear from other readers who feel the idea deserves some attention.

There are probably countless opportunities to present on these subjects and hundreds of good presenters who would benefit from 'canned' or nearly complete presentation materials. With an effectively organized and maintained repository, the influence of a great presentation could be spread across a much wider audience.

In the meantime, you are welcome to share my presentations at Kim's Presentations."

Seems like a good idea . . .

[wakejagr]

as long as the presentations are not stored in .ppt format.

:)

Content Repository

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Rather than having full or partial presentations, it would be more useful to have a repository of content, i.e. a Wiki, covering topics ranging from studies and statistics to info about OSS utilities, distros and tools.

The reason this would be far more useful is because presenters tend to have different presentation styles, and presentations tend to be brief. As such, it would be hard to use the same presentation in different scenarios.

Is it really useful?

[miyako]

The question that needs to be asked is, what useful purpose would a repository of presentations on F/OSS serve. You seem to be working under the idea that a good presentation would be useful in more venues than it was originally present in, but I'm not quite sure that this is really the case.
A good presentation is specifically targetted at the audience, and no two audiences are completely alike, and I'm not sure that the audiences would be similar enough for a good presentation given to one audience to be effective when given to another.
Audiences aside, a presentation should also play on the strengths of the presenter, and presenters probably vary even more widely than audiences.
One thing that could be useful however is a repository of information that could be used in creating presentations, if such a beast doesn't exist. This probably wouldn't have to be much more than a collection of links to other sites anyway, I'm sure the majority of the information is out there.
Of course, all that said, I'm all for promoting F/OSS, and it's good that we have new ideas on how to do this, and even if some of them don't pan out, it's always good that people are thinking of new things to help out F/OSS.

Re:Is it really useful?

[Dr. Evil]

You tweak the presentations and use them for ideas.

I disagree that every presentation has to be different... at least in so far as the presentation materials have to be different.

The best presentations I've seen or given have been ones which have been given out multiple times. You can fine tune the presentation, reorder parts, sort out the timing, include obvious questions or omit them to pull in audience participation.

It's not such a bad idea. Using them unmodified is a bit risky, but having a repository of presentations would be great as source material to create your own presentation.

From one of his presentations, he has a concept and graphic of a corporate adoption doughnut. That's a pretty nice little slide, if I had to give a similar sales pitch to an educational institution, I might think about including something like that. People understand doughnuts.

I suspect that the fellow who posted the question is competant enough to put this together. He just needs a subdirectory somewhere to shove his files, and an asbestos suit until some kind volunteers convert his PPT and DOC files into OpenOffice documents...

for historians and inspiration: YES

[DavidDeLux]

The question that needs to be asked is, what useful purpose would a repository of presentations on F/OSS serve

Well, in future years, people will be able to look back and gasp in amazement at how things said in those presentations either came to fruition, or flopped magnificiently. The academic historians doing such research will just fall over themselves if there is a repository of all those presentations easily to hand.

Plus, if you ever have to do a presentations, its always useful to see what and how so

Why not something like [the late] TechNetCast?

[ivi]

TNC archived a lot of good talks by well
known people, or at least about interesting
issues or products (eg, in MP3 format).

Take that concept & fill a similar archive
with OSS, Linux, FreeBSD & OpenBSD stuff...

Then we all profit from those efforts...
even folks with big, open minds, who hap-
pen to live/work in very small towns...

archive.org

[ashtonb]

archive.org might be a good site for such a collection.

Re:archive.org or TLDP.org

[awildman]

That's not bad, but it's not very Linux specific. There are thousands of Linux sites that have articles, papers, and presentations some with forums and community news. Most Events, Conferences, Expos, and LUGs archive their own presentations . Some are GPL, but many are copywrited by the individuals or published in magazines in various formats. Try to find some older presentations from the Linux World Expos http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/ [linuxworldexpo.com]. Point is there should be some quality controls, standard formats a

Re:WTF?

[ivi]

I agree... consider the cool HTML-based
site:

http://eXtremeProgramming.org

- quite usable as slides in presentations

I find it to be one of the best ones
that still fits into 384 KB (zipped)

Latest version: 2005-02-28

Excellent Idea, I'm doing something similar now..

[Padrino121]

I've been wanting a site for a while where I can aggregate my research, solutions, discussions, etc. so that it benefits not only me but the community at large.
Coincidently I just this week setup XWiki [xwiki.com] to try and finally make it a reality. It's still a work in progress but one of the things I'm trying to do is exactly what you are talking about.
It's rough around the edges but I'm going to start populating it with my data real soon, I'm currently trying to figure out how to organize. Come check it out if

Upstream provider killed port..

[Padrino121]

That didn't last long.. Cox is blocking the incoming port now.

- Brian

Better to link to them

[Ankh]

A Wiki or a Web site where people can review presentations, link to them, and say how useful they were, might be better for the community.

I can offer a place for such a site (i.e. bandwidth and hosting) if people are interested (although maybe EFF or FSF would be better places? Or maybe there's one already I don't know about?) but I don't have the cycles to set it up and run it.

Liam

Check out David Wheeler's Pages

[Gustavo]

David Wheeler [dwheeler.com] has written some of the most fact-rich, fluff-free articles on OSS/FS. They're not actual presentations, but I can't think of a better source of material to make one.

IT Conversations

[osewa77]

The IT Conversations site (itconversations.com) comtains a handful of talks by leaders in the Open Source community, but in MP3 format only. If we can combine the talks with the presentations it would be swell. The presentations alone aren't very useful since they don't have much depth