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Fun and Informative Way to Introduce Open Source?
jwg asks: "I work in an office environment where I provide technical services and solutions to my co-workers (as I am sure most Slashdot readers do at their respective places of employment). Once a month, we have a round-table meeting to discuss pressing issues in our office. At the beginning of these meetings, it is one person's job to provide some form of 'professional development', usually an activity or game to teach some skill, idea, or trend directly related to their job. My turn is coming up soon, and I would like to introduce my co-workers to the idea (and to some, the way of life) of Open Source. There are many examples of Open Source software and communities out there to reference (Mozilla, Wikipedia, MySQL and... oh yeah, Linux), but has anyone come up with or come across a method to introduce it in a quick, fun, and informative way to a wide variety of people each of which possess a even wider range of technical skill? Did I mention it has to be fun?"
Ask everyone in the group to imagine a simple piece of paper.
Ask them:
What would use a blank sheet of paper for?
What do you know about where the paper was manufactured?
What do you know about the inventor of paper?
There are few simple alternatives to paper. Sure there are whiteboards / chalkboards / computers / sheets of mylar, etc., but each has limitations that are not inherent to paper.
Ask them how they would feel if it suddenly cost $300.00 to purchase each sheet of paper simply because the biggest vendor decided that that was what they wanted to charge. What would they do to get around this barrier to their productivity. The alternatives aren't very convenient for most people. Would they look into making their own paper?
Then tell them that there is a community that is offering other ways to manufacture paper that drastically decreased the cost - back down to the previous rate - how would they feel about that.
Better still, what if that community were all volunteers, whose goal is to make access to this type of information / service / activity available to as many people as possible?
This is rather simplistic, and doesn't address a lot of what OSS/FOSS is about, but it is a simple way to introduce the subject.
It wouldn't hurt if you could download an Open Source paper airplane design so that they can build $300.00 paper airplanes at the end of your chat.
- A
Most people outside of IT (and many who do work in IT) could not care any less about the politics of software. They don't really care about this "Open Source" thing. And why should they? What they care about are applications that install and work as close to flawlessly as possible (or at least allow them to accomplish their tasks with a minimum of problems). I really don't think you'll get much more than "Gee, that's interesting... By the way, after the meeting, can you come by my cube and show me what I'm doing wrong with this Excel macro?" If I where you, I'd "introduce" specific applications (like OpenOffice, Firefox, other more specific applications...), not the concept of "Open Source". The accounting / administrative / human resources / other non-IT folks cjust have other things to worry about.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I would shoot myself if I had to do this.
Prime examples of wasted time at the work place. You know what would make this even worse? Having to do something like this with co-workers you hate. Even so, I think I could make it fun.
"Today, were going to play some reality television. I want everyone to vote for someone to leave the office. Now, while this isn't indicative of that person losing his or her job... it just might help.
It's secret ballot... so have at it... I should also mention that not choosing another individual indicates you are not a "Team Player" and will be autmoatically chosen for not submitting a ballot."
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
One example I've found to be rather effective is compare it to medicine or food recipes. Ask them if they would buy a medicine that does not list the ingredients (hopefully most would answer 'no'). Then compare that to software that don't tell you what's in it. Not a perfect comparison, but I find this to be a good introduction for most non-technical people. A slightly better example might be to compare it to cars. Take Linux for example, when you buy a Linux-powered car, you have the permission to open up the hood, take the engine apart, fix it, enhance it, tweak it, and share your improvements with the other linux-car owners, thus making their cars better too. Compare this to a Microsoft car, where opening your hood will void the warranty.
Then you try to do the same with the whiteboard turned around so that no-one can see what the cow-orker is drawing.. turn the whiteboard around and BAM everyone can see how freakin' insane it is to keep your software proprietary.
How we know is more important than what we know.