[Linux-aus] Re: Open Source gets a hearing in Canberra

[Pia Smith]

Hi all,

I attended the NOIE seminar on behalf of Linux Australia.

Numerous other people have written a fairly accurate summary of the day
(thanks Con, Greg, and others :) ) and I have but a few things to add.

There were four main speakers on the day then some case studies. The
speakers were: 

- Mary-Ann Fisher, IBM Program Director
	Mary-Ann did an excellent talk on Open Source and Open Standards, how
they fit into the industry, and why it is so beneficial for companies to
adopt them. She spoke about IBMs huge support for both principles and
briefly went on to IBMs support of Linux as a specific solution that is
built on Open Source and Open Standards. Not a highly technical talk,
and well suited to the audience of the day.

- Maggie Wilderotter, Senior Vice President – Business Strategy,
Microsoft Corporation
	Maggie spoke about commercial software, its place and value in the
industry, and used Microsoft as an example. The talk very carefully
adopted some catch-cries of Open Source (such as Open Standards,
community building, and access to code) casually meandering around the
issues. It was a very well worded presentation that left most people in
agreement, much to the suprise of the majority of the audience. Certain
questions about access to patches/code, opening the exchange protocols
and office standards, or support for Shared Source modifications made by
the select few with access, were easily received with promises of
getting the Australian Microsoft rep to follow them up.

- Gordon Hubbard and Associates, AUUG
	The AUUG team did a good job with a presentation about Open Source and
the Open Source community. It was informative, and also covered some
technical ground.

- Mr Peter Gigliotti, BOM (Case Study: Bureau of Meteorology)
	Informative, used a lot of hard facts that made Open Source look very
good :)

- Mr Robin Simpson, Gartner Research Director
	Gartner dide a fair assesment of the industry today, and had a lot of
positive expectations for specifically Linux. Robin also presented an
interesting concept of Network Armies [1]

- Mr Tony Ablong, (Case Study: Department of Veterans Affairs)
	Highly technical presentation about Veteran Affairs' planned
implementation of Open Source and Linux.

For more details and to download the presentation, go to:

http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/egovernment/Better_Infrastructure/OSS/oss_seminars.htm

Thanks all!
Pia

[1] From an interesting article:
http://security1.gartner.com/story.php.id.13.s.1.jsp
"Territory still matters, but it matters less and less in a global
economy. Our era is seeing the rise of the "network army," a social
structure tied together by values and beliefs, not geography. The
network army communicates via the Internet. Its members are drawn from
multiple communities. Their agendas may differ dramatically in many
respects, but where they align, the army's power can be massive."
Go us! :)

On Fri, 2003-02-21 at 15:25, Anand Kumria wrote:

> Pia did attend. I heard from her recently that she has some fairly tight
> deadlines to meet at the moment and hasn't had an opportunity to write 
> anything up.