The University of Minnesota is trying to put together a seminar on Open Source software on November 4th at the Earl Brown Center in St. Paul. They are looking for local speakers to talk about various topics as well as present case studies. The audience will be CEOs, CIOs, CFOs and decision makers at most of the large companies in the Twin Cities. Although Nov. 4th is still a long way off, they would like to print description of the speakers presentations and to get in print they need the descriptions and bios by next Monday (Sept 16th), which is not a lot of notice. If you are willing to speak about a topic (Linux, Zope, Python, Community Wireless, Apache etc.) or a case study (like www.isd197.org or other successful local Open Source projects) please let Mike know. Anyone that can speak to the topic of reliability of Open Source software would be very much appreciated. If you would like to speak, just send Mike a reply with the following: 1) Your Name 2) Topic or Case Study Name 3) Short Description of Topic (1 paragraph) 4) A short bio (1 paragraph) Each session would be about 50 minutes with a few minutes at the end for questions. If we get a good turnout for this it will help encourage more Open Source classes at the U of M. Thanks for your help - Dan Dan McCreary e-Business Strategy Development home office: (651) 405-9034 cell: (612) 986-1552 e-mail: dmccreary at attbi.com -----Original Message----- From: Mike Amidon [mailto:mamidon at cce.umn.edu] Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 4:08 PM To: 'dmccreary at attbi.com' Subject: Open Source Seminar Dan- Thanks very much for offering to help find presenters for us regard open source technology. If we can get the presenter list completed by Monday, I believe we can pull off the Nov. 4 date. The idea for the seminar came from Allie Micka, one of our Open Source discussion group members. She saw it as an opportunity to educate the public about what open source tools can offer and how far they've come. This seminar would be targeted to CIOs, CEOs, CFOs and other non-technical purse-string controllers. The U of M's position is not to be anti-Microsoft, but rather to serve as a forum for discussion about viable alternative solutions. As I mentioned, the group is also working on a 40-hour course to help emerging businesses utilize open source tools in the office (Linux, file and print sharing, email, desktop apps.), plus an 80-hour course on how to create a Web presence using open source tools. We would want to mention these courses at this seminar. I am thinking of starting with a breakfast, say 7:30 AM. We would have a keynote address that would set the tone for the rest of the morning. After the keynote, we would introduce the breakout sessions/speakers. Attendees would be able to attend 2 sessions during the morning. I am guessing they would run from 9:00 - 10:15, to be repeated from 10:30 - 11:45. These sessions would be "case studies" of organizations who had successfully implemented open source technology. I would want a variety of typical business "problems" to be addressed by these presenters (e.g., firewalls, databases, e-commerce, file sharing) so that attendees can see the value of open source in general. In a separate area, such as a lobby, we could invite vendors who have developed commercial open source tools. Perhaps some big names such as Red Hat, Sun or IBM would be willing to attend. We could also have a side-by-side demonstration of MS Office and Star Office, with an appropriate price list for each. Mike Amidon Program Director Dept. of Information Technology College of Continuing Education University of Minnesota (612) 627-1813 mamidon at cce.umn.edu