For a little background, can you describe the general topic of your presentation and tell us what is new in the last few months?
Skolelinux 3.0 was released in july, and we're gearing up for a maintenance release (3.0r1) for minor upgrades and bugfixes. My presentation will focus on the goals and current work within the community of the Debian Edu project delivering the distribution Skolelinux.
Can you give a summary of what you will present? Why should someonechoose to come to your presentation?
The presentation will be an introduction to the great need and goals of the Debian Edu project. Especially how we try to achieve use of technology as a tool for better education instead of making learning technology the goal of the education. There is currently a widespread discussion going on on how to make software vendors create executable working applications suitable for running on thin clients, or even better through a web browser. Pushing forward with both private and public sector needs are vital and the community leaders are trying to help the developers have interoperability across the different flavours of education-focused Linuxes (Skolelinux, Edubuntu, OpenSuse Edu).
Some topics included will be:
The community - how 150 people are changing education technology
Skolelinux - goals for 4.0
Sustainability
Scale - Clusters or standalone?
Our educational focus
Getting better software
How did you get involved in Free Software and in what way is it important to you?
I first learned about the world of free software in the 90-ies when I was trying my first Linux installations on some old machines given to me by my dad. Slackware Linux was my first way back in the winter of 1995/1996. After gradually moving from just exploring Linux into the greater world of technology consultancy I have come to greatly appreciate the rich and prosperous stack of programmes readily available for most tasks at hand. Both personally and professionally I have used Linux on my desktop since 2001 and have great expectations for the year of 2008 and how free software might change our lives forever. As a conservative voter; What I value most about free software are the freedom to change, develop and contribute in a world free from the disruption of licence-woes.
Is there any other particular presentation you'll be going to? Why is that topic of interest?
I'd like to attend:
"Open ID" - Important and very interesting subject with great impacts in the future.
"Digital Rights" - With the current hostility of commercial software vendors and IP litigation companies this is a hot and important subject!
"NGO How to make decisions by consensus" - Important not only for communities but also for leaders of any form that will need to address how their group, company or community should make decisions related to their task/work.
Contact: akai@skolelinux.no
Links: Anders Kringstad
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