Slashdot Mirror
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?"
How about creating or buying a ready-made "computer on a stick"? That is a USB memory stick...there's a fair bit of open source software, OS, apps, utilities etc., that can boot from a USB drive. You can put this together or buy one from third-party vendors. Another inexpensive alternative would be to pass around a "how to" sheet to your group after you give them a demo off a USB drive. On it you could also include the PCmag reviews of OpenOffice reassuring Microsoft Office compatibility. If you want to go the extra mile, you could even set up the Mozilla browser with all the open-source resources bookmarked like wikipedia, Wikinews, imdb, openmedia.org etc. It's an eye-opener for those not familiar with open source. More here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/on_computers_on.htm l
Have each person write a paragraph for a story, and allow each other person to edit parts that they feel could use work. Use it as an illustration to show that if people pitch in and contribute ideas to a project work can be fun, and much faster than conventional methods of doing work.
How about making a black box that blinks in a certain order known only to you. Let them try and figure out what it does, and see how long it takes. Now open the box and pull out the instructions. Simple.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Expanding on the paper airplane thing might make more sense than hammering on the cost. Start with a simple paper airplanne, get ideas from the room to improve it. Eliminate what doesn't work, and keep building off what does. SHow that thats how the open source model works- individual contributors adding together neat ideas to make the whole.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Play a game where each person contributes their expertise. Tell a collaborative story, or make a drawing on the white-board.
One person draws something, then each person takes a turn 'fixing it.'
Or, play a mini-game of "Clue." You come up with something like maybe 'Dumbo.' Then you tell one person to draw an elephant while you give everyone else individual clues as to specifics about what you want this elephant to look like.
The Clue people tell the elephant person small changes to make for the elephant to look more like it's supposed to. (You can have the clues be images, to more accurately explain what the clue givers are supposed to describe.)
Okay, so that's nothing like "Clue." The point is, you involve your coworkers in an exercise where they each contribute to help the outcome achieve a more desired shape.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
In my experience, most people have trouble understanding the business model that open source companies make their money off. They will by now have heard something about open source, so they will likely have some preformed opinion on that issue. The most conservative will insist on skewing the licence terms to the company because that how they are used to making money.
If you figure out a way to get the point across that the different business model you need for open source is not hindering your chances of succes, you will have your 'war' won. You will still have to battle the nah-sayers, but if you can show the money and how it's made, you win.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Try to give: ... and so on, and then ask them to make an omolete by convincing each other to that you pan is better to do the omollete.
- 1 pan to each participant;
- The same number of eggs as participants to one of the participants;
- Salt to another;
- Dishes to another;
Secretlly promise sushi lunch to one or two of the participants if they get the ommolet on the pan they have.
After some time reveal you secret agrrement, and ask each participant to give some of the things youo gave them.
Finnally you will have Open Source lunch;
- Everyone gave very little, but all gainned.
or
"I found it faster to explain the effort of open sourced projects when i show wikipedia,"
(I am portuguese. If you think my english is bad, try posting in portuguese!)
I am portuguese. If you think my written english is bad, try posting in portuguese!
There is a difference between introducing them to OSS software (i.e. using oss software instead of closed source) and understanding the concept and usefullnes of open colaboration. If your goal is latter, introduce them to Wikipedia, and then set up a Wiki instance on the intranet for colaborative information storage. Show them the basic concept of Wiki and, set some loose goals for what sort of data you would want to share, and then set them loose on it for a few weeks. I think it is probably the best way to show what OSS is capable of - as well as showing the benefits (and pitfalls!) of open cooperation.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Dig an old PC out of storage, like maybe something around a P500. Install Linux. Install OpenOffice and Firefox.
Start your activity by having everyone use the PC for a bit, then have them try to guess the MHz of the machine.
Give the winner the PC. Give everyone who attends a copy of TheOpenCD.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Then show how even if everyone has access to the underlying knowledge of how to fold an airplane, someone can still offer a paid service that folds the paper airplanes for people and repairs if a wing gets bent.
And maybe mention in passing that the community airplane has the unique advantage of not bursting in to flames after 12 minutes of flight time.
It wont really teach them what OOS is but it will be fun and introduce them to some of the players. :P
Get a computer with Debian attached to a network and projector. Then take software installation requests from the crowd. For example, when some says "computational linguistics" hunt through the package listings and apt-get install the closest program - probably mmorph in this example. Encourage bizarre requests and surprise yourself at how much wild and crazy open source software is at your fingertips.
PS. If anyone asks how it works, say the computer is downloading knowledge from 'The Matrix' and refer to the helicopter scene in the movie.
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.
The easiest way I've found to completely undercut all arguments to open source is to describe it how you just did - as a reaction to paying for software. It makes it sound like a juvenile reaction to the 'real world'; it makes it sound like no serious developer would touch it; and it makes it sound like the whole thing is driven by people too cheap to buy commercial software.
The best results I've had selling the idea of OSS is to start out with the idea that software began as a free commodity, and it's really only big business (like Microsoft) that want you to believe that things should be different now.
Then move onto open standards, point out that if someone came up with a paper size designed as a common format (to replace A4 or foolscap, ignoring anyone who would actually need the extra space - flawed analogy I know) that was too big for regular filing cabinets, and required you to buy your cabinets from one company and one company only (lets assume the size is patentable and patented) - noone would want to use it. Point out that that's exactly what you've got with closed standards, and that you are literally trusting your data to the whims of a company (bonus points if you can say foreign company).
My point is that you really shouldn't compare OSS to non-OSS. You should compare the OSS philosophy to that of non-OSS. Point out that if noone will necessarily profit, noone has a larger stake then anyone else - i.e. if there's noone who has a vested interest in forcing you to upgrade, there's noone who will be able to dictate your pace of IT development to you.
First of all, it's a waste of time to get all bug-eyed about politics. Most folks barely know how to turn their machines on and are suspicious of any kind of change.
The place I last worked I was responsible for the IT budget, such as it was, and like any rational person I used the money on hardware--actual stuff--as much as possible. Shiny, quiet computers with lots of ram, mirrored RAID drives on the server, a zoomy networked laser printer that cut the cost of consumables. Stuff like that.
Everyone got Thunderbird for mail. Everyone got OpenOffice except the owner, who did these baroque spreadsheets in Excel that wouldn't run in OO.o without a lot of screwing around.
The biggest hit was showing IE and Firefox w/Adblock running side by side. Again no mention of politics or anything. No ads or pop-ups either.
What software did I pay for? OEM Windows SBS 2003 ($450), a half dozen OEM copies of XP Pro ($140 per), Grisoft antivirus ($35 each for 2 years), one OEM Office XP ($70). About $1600 all in, a lot less than it could have been.
I couldn't really do linux on the server because the owner knew I was quitting and he felt like he'd have more of a chance with a familiar looking interface. In actual fact administering SBS probably isn't much easier than linux, but I didn't push it.
It's just not possible to shove your own software preferences down other people's throats. But now there are a few more happy users of OO.o, various Mozilla products, etc, and an owner that'll balk at shelling out big bucks for a $0.25 CD that'll only run on one machine.
Use free software where it makes sense. Gradually things will change.
This would at least raise some eyebrows.
Innovate or become obsolete.
If these people do any kind of statistical analysis or modeling, they would love the R Project software.
.dmg, Windows in a .zip & Linux [lots of download options] and it works fine.)
http://www.r-project.org/
Its open source. Its got loads of examples. In runs in every environment (I've got it for Mac in a
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
When I was finally confident with WEBCALENDAR, I pitched it to my boss ( make sure you schedule 30 mins in his/her calendar or else you will get interuptions etc , and you will not be able to get your idea across ) . After showing the calendar system , he was impressed , I told him not only is it in house , web based, but FREE.
We just roled out the calendar this monday, and trained about 20 people, and everything went well.
It was very great to see something you are trying to implement actually happen, and everyone thanks and appreciates my hard work in bringing this to them.
This has opened the door for OSS at our district.
Manuelpl
"Wireless means not having to say AFK when going to the restroom"