[EuroPython] Starting to plan

[Beatrice Fontaine]

On Thu, 2003-09-18 at 23:42, Harald Armin Massa wrote:
> > 3. Are there any important changes we should make to the format of the
> > tracks?
> 
> I would like to propose an additional track:
> 
> "social knowledge"
> 
> Topics should pe:
> 
> - presentation skills
> - negotiating skills
> - business arguments
> 
> 
> I'm volunteering to do at least one talk in this track, if I remember
> correctly Anna also was thinking about helping with this track.
> 
> 
> Harald

I would be absolutely thrilled to deal with that one.


<personal horn>My Python skills may still be rudimentary but I have been
successfully convincing people to use Open Source products (mainly Zope
and recently Plone for two rather visible projects), preaching Linux to
the masses, etc. for a good while now. I have had my own IT-company
since 1995 (Belgium, then Finland, now Sweden) and have been running it
working on smaller and larger EU-projects, mainly in the area of
E-learning (since before it was called that), use of IT in small
companies, and entrepreneurship. Web development, product localisation,
PR stuff and EU-project management. I used to be a corporate drone and
got fed up with it back in 1994 so I took my projects and went (with
corporate consent and probably relief). I've been living and working
with Shae since 1999 and am one of his most successful converts, at
least as far a Open Source is concerned... I am a business geek'ette and
anything but a cavern dweller (i.e. I am not IV'ed to my box). I have
found that getting people like me to do advocacy is one good way to get
the public at large to understand the actual potential impact of Open
Source on their own business activities - like up here in the North of
Sweden where offering a web hotel seems to be synonymous with selling FP
2000 to everyone naive enough to buy it, literally and
figuratively.</personal horn>

I have given a few talks/workshops on human networking in virtual
cooperation, intercultural communication, teleworking, and on getting
chix into IT. For our own business, I have to restart the whole issue of
"why this solution and not another" (or rather "_the_ other") and "what
was that thing called again" every time I begin a new negotiation. Even
though whole governments have started buying into Linux, getting Open
Source products into business at the small business level takes a lot of
conviction (which geeks have in large amounts), but especially the power
to convince (which is by far less fun to try out, for many). "I just
know it's right and you are a moron if you don't get it" may work in
some cases. I haven't tried it out myself, personally.

So, that was me blowing my own brass section. To cut the long story
short: if a sufficient number of people want that track, I would go as
far as offering to run it.

Any more takers?

-- 
Béatrice Fontaine <bea at webwitches.com>