Fun and Informative Way to Introduce Open Source? 364
jwg asks: "I work in an office environment where I provide technical services and solutions to my co-workers (as I am sure most Slashdot readers do at their respective places of employment). Once a month, we have a round-table meeting to discuss pressing issues in our office. At the beginning of these meetings, it is one person's job to provide some form of 'professional development', usually an activity or game to teach some skill, idea, or trend directly related to their job. My turn is coming up soon, and I would like to introduce my co-workers to the idea (and to some, the way of life) of Open Source. There are many examples of Open Source software and communities out there to reference (Mozilla, Wikipedia, MySQL and... oh yeah, Linux), but has anyone come up with or come across a method to introduce it in a quick, fun, and informative way to a wide variety of people each of which possess a even wider range of technical skill? Did I mention it has to be fun?"
The Open CD (Score:2, Informative)
TheOpenCD (Score:4, Informative)
Chock full of F/OSS software for Windows, it's a great tool to introduce MS entrenched minds to the availability of quality, alternative software.
http://www.theopencd.org/ [theopencd.org]
Re:Don't even bother... (Score:5, Informative)
I agree that most people don't care about the freedom aspect, but if you start pointing out the forced upgrade cycles, the inevitable breakage of some app or another with the next security patch or service pack, the fact that F/OSS puts as much guarantee on their software as Microsoft does for theirs (NONE), and if something bugs you about a F/OSS app, you can change it.
People want a minimum of hassle. So point out things like the Word 95/97/2000/XP incompatibilities. My previous employer sent out a company-wide e-mail stating that we were not to install Office XP on any systems, either from our own CD's (as this amounted to piracy) or from MS Developer Network CD's, and we especially weren't to spend company money to buy a copy. The reason was that they didn't want to upgrade the entire organization to Office XP, and yet once you saved a doc with XP, you had a decent chance of being able to open it only with XP.
-paul
Re:Get them thinking... (Score:3, Informative)
Trying to persuade people that what they do normally at work is open source, but calling it open source makes it somehow better will see you swiftly moved into the loon category in the workplace hierarchy.
Re:Open Source Computer on a Stick (Score:5, Informative)
If you already have a USB memory device or if you PC can not boot from a USB device, then there are alternatives.
Two Linux distros designed for small size & boot on CDR or USB devices
Damn Small Linux 50MB http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/linuxuser/2005/0
Puppy Linux 40-90MB http://flaviostechnotalk.com/wordpress/index.php/
Two Linux distros designed to boot from CDR & used as the base for many derivatives
Knoppix http://www.linuxforums.org/news/article-24309.htm
Slax http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/1193 [tuxmachines.org]
Myth TV Setup (Score:3, Informative)
Get a normal ariel antenna, get a tv card ( get the one that works please no tv card hackin ) and a box that can hold all that stuff and an nvidia gfx card. Put it together. Tell people why you have the hardware you have.
Get a good guide, and start getting the parts of mythtv installed. Make small groups and make everyone install a small portion. The zap2it direcotry services. One group does the mytht tv config, one group does the themes etc....
End result you will have people doign the samething at home. Sure Linux is free, only if your time is free. And if you get a community and each individual gives a small bit and talks what they have done then, you get a pretty fast application turn around. And mythtv is easy. Tiedious but with good instructions you got MythTV box ready to blow away the TiVo and that VCR.
PS nothing against Gentoo but please no gentoo distro because the time required to install would be too great. And yes Distcc is great but it doesn't work all the time etc... This is educational so use a binary disribution. Afterwards you will be set. Men will want to be you and women will want you and children will make you their idols. And slashdot users will slashdot your webpage.
Mythtv is fun try it
-1, offtopic (Score:5, Informative)
Ask them what they want. (Score:2, Informative)
Now first off you're asking the wrong crowd. You already know about open source, and therefore you are, what they call in the field of education, a Subject Matter Expert (SME). Yes, educators have lots of stupid acroynms just like geeks do. Now who do you ask for advice on giving a presentation? more SMEs! no. you should be asking trained educator and facilitators. But no matter. I've dipped my toe in the training field so I'll lend a hand (or attempt a crappy reply like everyone else at least).
Secondly, don't give them this: WikiReader on Free Software [wikipedia.org] unless you want to confuse and bore them with a Stallmanesque view of open sour--, er, --Free Software. [sorry, obligatory wikipedia link, even if it is really bad]
Briefly talk about some open source projects and licensing (e.g. Firefox, Knoppix, GPL).
Come up with a stupid focus question like "What would it take for this company to open source its in-house accounts program if you were X" where X is a different role assigned to each person. Get them to break up into groups and discuss it. Bring them back together after 5 minutes to talk about it. Field some questions because no one understood what they were meant to be doing. Now find out what they're actually interested in about it and try to answer. Then play the omlette game that someone else suggested but make sure no one's vegan, and make sure you use free range eggs--think about those poor little chickens in cages. Hand out free copies of Knoppix "for when your home computer/laptop stops working, just stick this in and use it instead of Windows" and force migrate everyone to use Firefox at work. Voila. Great presentation, John.
But seriously,
Try checking out some actual activism/training sites, such as the change agency [thechangeagency.org] (some people who do know how to facilitate a training session) or TFC [trainingforchange.org] or this one [casagordita.com].
Why not give them the Open CD? (Score:2, Informative)
Either way, you've got them!
Re:Show them the command-line (Score:3, Informative)
Re:examples you could use... (Score:5, Informative)
Why is this insightful?
Apple
You expressly acknowledge and agree that use of the Apple Software is at your sole risk. The Apple Software is provided "AS IS" and without warranty of any kind
Microsoft:
In no event shall microsoft or its suppliers be liable for any special, incidental, punitive, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits or confidential or other information, for business interruption, for personal injury, for loss of privacy, for failure to meet any duty including of good faith or of reasonable care, for negligence, and for any other pecuniary or other loss whatsoever) arising out of or in any way related to the use of or inability to use the product,
Nobody is required to give warranties on consumer OS or software. It's one of the reasons why there's so much crap out there