UKUUG - “More than just profit” talk
To the UKUUG’s Large Scale System Administrators’ conference today where I was the rather strange choice of last minute speaker. Having spent 18 hours at the keyboard yesterday I wasn’t best prepared, but speaking on The Third Sector and Free Software shouldn’t have been too much of a challenge to me.
Indeed, despite the talk being more of a ramble at times, I think I managed to distill 4 key messages for the assembled Unix crowd:
- There’s a real lack of IT knowledge in many VCS groups resulting in too many having no IT strategy. Please get involved with a local group at a governance level and help to make up this deficit.
- Of all the resources lacking, training is holding back most groups. Please give a little time for effective training.
- Many groups are tied into niche proprietary applications. Please help to code web-enabled, Free Software replacements.
- I’m involved in lots of projects with great potential but not enough man power - please speak to me about collaborating on them.
I think I may also have mentioned what a great business model the Social Enterprise is rather too many times. :-)
If you were at the talk and want to get in touch about any of the projects, please e-mail me, or find me on Twitter.
March 25th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Well done for raising this banner at UKUUG!
In a lot of cases, the web-enabled free software replacements are already there, but the lock-in makes it too expensive to escape because no-one included it in the budget when it was sold to the organisation and it’s a bit embarassing to admit it now, so the exit cost gets attributed to the free software replacements, which seems a bit unfair.
Another oft-quoted problem is the lack of support, but us support co-operatives do exist, even if we are sometimes kept out by things like the NCVO-Microsoft promotions and certain support organisations that criticise free software and think it’s all about price not freedom.
March 25th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Agreed about the lock-in - that’s why understanding who owns your data, and in what format it is, was part of our IT Strategy courses (at MOST, and at M6-IT - I’d love to revive them).
Since the VCS “LUG” idea got nowhere I’m unsure of where to go next to promote FOSS support. All ideas welcome ;)
March 26th, 2010 at 1:18 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Steve Woods, MJ Ray. MJ Ray said: read http://ur1.ca/rpuy Sounds like a good talk from @richardsmedley on #foss and #coops earlier today [...]
March 26th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Interested to hear more about support co-operatives!
Fiona, Trustee Education Otherwise + proud user of Free Software