froscon2008 - 1.1

FrOSCon
Free and Open Source Software Conference

Speakers
Machtelt Garrels
Schedule
Day Day 2 (2008-08-24)
Room HS4
Start time 17:45
Duration 01:00
Info
ID 205
Event type lecture
Track Legal Issues
Language used for presentation en
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How to kick government ass with open standards

Tips and tricks to become an activist

How can you kick government officials into moving towards the Open Standards path? OpenDoc Society was specifically created by activists who wanted to support the decisisons taken by the Dutch and Belgian governments, however weak and non-committing these might be. This talk is the story of what is currently happening in Belgium and the Netherlands, and also about how we get German civil servants to help our government.

We'll first explain about OpenDoc Society, its history, why and by whom it was created, and about ODF and its importance in government administrations in particular, and for anybody else who is concerned about digital preservation in general.

Then we move into the interesting stuff: how we played games with government officials, how to argue members of different political parties into voting in favour of Open Standards, how to make a lot of noise when you are taking action.

Also a word about education: we don't want to send our children to Microsoft Academy, but the teachers can't be blamed for offering non-free software, since they don't know any better. How to reach teachers, how to argue them into offering software that is not only available on MS Windows systems is an important fight of the battle for freedom.