[esocialaction] Short feedback from the MOST Project Launch Day

[Chris Bailey]

*Short feedback from the MOST Project Launch Day*

/Friday 16 December 2005 by Christina Haralanova/

The 5th of December was the Launch Day of the Midlands Open Source
Technology (MOST) project. More than 50 people, interested in Free and
Open Source for the VCS attended the meeting, held in the Birmingham
Voluntary Services Council.

The software freedom dedicated day started with an introduction to Free
and Open Source Software by showing its advantages to potential users.
This was followed by a presentation by the Project Leader, Dave Nichols,
oriented to explaining the MOST initiative. The ChangeUp funded project
of the West Midlands is aiming to improve the IT infrastructure of the
VCS in the region and is one of the two FOSS-based projects funded by
the UK government.

*Adapting to Linux is easy*

The next presentation was particularly interesting: it was about
"removing the fear of change" for FOSS users, made by Richard Coubry, a
Linux end-users trainer. "The most common fears are related to the fact
that the users are not sure that the new software will carry out the
functions the old one was doing, or that the system will be more
technical than they expect", the participants mentioned.

Richard presented the facts from research made on users who start with
OpenOffice for the first time after having used MS Office before that.
"You need a maximum of a week or two in order to adapt to the new office
programs", he says. "And you will be using them to 90% of the capacity
of the old program". He made a recommendation for people who have just
started with OpenOffice, to create a list of the most commonly used
features and the ways to do them in the new system. After all, we all
use a limited capacity of the programs on our desktops!

*The demo*

The demo of the Linux-installed computers was impressive, since this put
the above mentioned statements into practice. The participants, many of
which were seeing the system for the first time, were soon convinced
that the interface is not much different from the Windows environment,
nor is it too complicated. Even features such as accessibility are much
better developed than in proprietary systems.

The main programs installed were shown to the audience, and even an
accountancy application, based on Linux was demonstrated. The audience
had the chance to try the usability of the system, and many looked
impressed at the friendly environment of Ubuntu/Linux.

Right after the demo, at 13:00h, the MOST Project was officially
launched with prizes, lunch and drinks.

*Using Linux in schools? Why not?*

Richard Rothwell, a teacher in the Handsworth Grammar School presented
an exceptional case study from his experience. The school has had
Windows laptops before, but they found out it was greatly impractical
for use by the pupils. The laptops break easily, the system crashes too
often, there is no replacement...

What Richard Rothwell did, was to buy one powerful machine, and 250
older and simple desktops, each of them at the price of £85. He
installed a Linux operating system on the machines and made a network.
The powerful computer was physically inaccessible for the pupils, and it
was the one that contained all the important information and programs.

The kids would use the desktops as terminals to access the powerful
computer. They would break a computer sometimes, but the technician
would come and replace it immediately with another one. "It would take
up to 5 minutes to start the new computer, so the kid would not waste
time if a machine breaks", Richard described.

*...and lots of discussion
*