[Ubuntu Chicago] Meeting proposal

[George Lesica]

Right now, the educational funding in this state is at its all
> time lowest, so "free" or "damn close to free" is music to their ears if
> marketed correctly. Word of the wise on this one, go directly for the board and
> not their IT people. IT people are typically idiots who breathe Windows and
> cuss Linux.

i can personally vouch for this. i work as a graduate assistant doing
random tech support and such for the college of sciences @ eiu. i have
suggested FOSS solutions to numerous individuals on numerous occasions
and by far the *least* receptive people to these ideas are the IT
people. they come up with all sorts of reasons why linux can't work
but mostly it is because their skill set is with windows (and maybe
osx, but only the gui) and they are terrified that linux will make
them look dumb.

keep in mind that in many (not all) cases, educational institutions
are hiring IT people from near the bottom of the barrel. this is due
to a couple factors including the fact that most higher ed
institutions are in the middle of a cornfield (public ones especially)
and lower salaries than the private sector in most cases. the fact
that IT hiring is difficult for these institutions also means that the
people they do hire have very little incentive to add to their skill
sets.

additionally this means that when the people in charge are making
decisions they end up getting a large amount of their information from
companies trying to sell them things. this results in crappy decisions
and purchases, but also means that the windows world is the one that
primarily gets discussed since there are relatively few companies
peddling FOSS solutions.

in any event, i have had some success getting professors and even
administrators to at least take an interest in linux and keep it in
their sights for the future but the IT people are literally a lost
cause.

-george