What Should a Community Computer Lab Offer?

Ballresin asks: "A local computer company is expanding and including a computer lab in their setup, and they want me to come in as its Administrator. I am supposed to be giving them input on what to teach/host. What does Slashdot think a medium sized tourist town (Okoboji, Spirit Lake, Arnolds Park, Iowa) should have to offer to the locals? I was thinking something along the lines of 'How to Use Windows 101' and 'How to Use Office 101'. My compatriots want to offer some off-the-wall classes such as 'Hacker Ethics: Why and How' and a few other odd classes. I have polled people in the area, which resulted the discovery that 80% of them are from out of town, so don't really care. What you guys think; What kind of classes or what games/LAN party setups should a new, small business offer? Any ideas/input is greatly appreciated."

Comments

How about...

[Chordonblue]

"Open Source: What's out there and how to take advantage of it"

Starting with an explanation of the ethos of Open Source, you could then go on with some real examples of how Open Source has great appeal.

You could hit OpenOffice.org and a few other of the more well known pieces of software. In addition, you could do a segment on Linux - basic tutorials, that kind of thing.

I guess it would depend on how technical you wanted to get, but I would probably keep it simple. A lot of people have heard of Open Source software but have no idea what the advantages are.