Increasing Ubuntu-AU visibility.

[karmic]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 18:44:40 -0800 (PST)
Michael <keltoiboy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone.
> 

> I'll give an example for 4. Being a teacher I am interested in
> promoting Ubuntu to schools and students. To me Ubuntu has huge
> potential in schools,

> How could Ubuntu-Au promote Ubuntu to the various public sector
> education departments, well going to individual schools is a waste
> of time because not every school has an IT manager that is capable
> of working on the schools IT infrastructure so you would need to
> canvas the entire department starting from the Director General
> (being from NSW I'm using NSW terminologies) and then work your way
> through the levels down to the various schools. They need to be
> convinced that Ubuntu is a viable option not only that they will
> need to be convinced that Ubuntu-AU is going to be there to help.
> 
> What will they look for? I think they will want to know what Ubuntu
> has to offer. I wouldn't even bother telling them to check the
> Edubuntu site, why? well its not even up to date. So, and this will
> be the same for every industry we want to encourage to change over,
> we would need to update (for Ubuntu-AU) the list of programs
> available and how they can be used instead of the Windows options.
> We would need to show things like costs savings, we would need to
> show training options for staff and possibly also students. We
> would need to have a possible role out plan formulated so that,
> incase of difficulties, there are still usable PCs available to
> use. Believe it or not that last point is extremely important, I
> remember a few years ago the NSW department made a huge change and
> it didn't work so for about a week most of the state schools had no
> usable PCs.
> 

imo this is a role for Canonical. the au-loco can (and should) of
course provide links, local knowledge and contacts where ever
possible. but to be honest, this is just one of the paths Canonical
must pursue in a 'service' type role to be able to continue to
promote and support Ubuntu for us all. Supporting Canonical is
probably important than promoting Ubuntu locally in terms of the
LoCo's objectives. 

So, as a teacher, if you have a dialogue path to a State Minister,
I suspect that would be interesting.