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Software Freedom Day, Sat 21 Sep 2013

Organising committee

Brett James, Duncan Macneil and Ben Sturmfels.

Principles for the event

  • no burnout - we're all busy enough, so if we find this is becoming hard work, we probably need to simplify
  • inclusive and appealing to newbies
  • promote free software and open source as an alternative to proprietary software
  • reunite the technical community in Ballarat
  • take steps towards an ongoing community group that may be BLUG-like, but may also be subtly different like a Hackerspace

Cost is around $200 including GST and public liability insurance.

Seating for up to 130.

To be confirmed whether AV gear setup is extra.

Duncan has now booked and paid for this awesome venue. He's currently out of pocket for around $200 so we'll have to make sure we work that out.

Funding

Duncan is approaching Matt Morris at Ballarat ICT.

Schedule of the day ideas

Brett suggested some time for Q&A.

Ben's schedule brainstorm

I'm totally open to and very interested to hear your ideas.

09:00: Set up

10:00: Doors open

10:30: Introductory talk on Free Software (30 mins)

11:10: Talk demoing a range of Free Software alternatives (30 mins)

11:50: Discussion workshop: Building the Hackerspace/Free Software community in Ballarat (30 mins)

12:30: Discussion workshop: Encouraging diversity (eg. gender, technical knowledge, disability, spoken language)

13:00: Pack up

13:30: Community lunch at a nearby restaurant that students can afford, eg. pizza.

This is based on the assumption that we'll only have one space to work with. If we had enough room to split off, we could do something like run two workshops in parallel and give more discussion time. 30 mins isn't very long.

Speakers

(Ben) I'd be very happy to given an introductory talk on free software. I've done this at three previous Software Freedom Days in Melbourne and I think it's gone quite well.

Marketing ideas

  • 3BA community events
  • Mix FM have something similar
  • City of Ballarat events listings
  • BLUG mailing list - I have access to a copy from Josh
  • Comp Sci/ICT dept at University of Ballarat
  • Comp Sci/ICT dept at ACU
  • IT teachers at various secondary schools
  • Carolynne Hamdorf LEAP (Duncan knows)
  • Tourism Ballarat
  • Malcolm Valance at Tech Park (Duncan knows)
  • Ballarat subreddit
  • Ballarat Courier?
  • Matt Morris at Ballarat ICT (Duncan knows)

Ben runs the sfd.org.au website. Our event is also registered on the international Software Freedom Day website.

Individuals to personally invite (aka. VIPs)

These are people who deserve a personal invitation to the event (a personal invitation is a lot more powerful than a bulk email). I suggest we collect a list here of people that should be invited. Some may be interested in helping out on the day too.

  • Josh Stewart
  • Sae Ra Germain
  • Michael Ellery
  • Kathy Reid (Geelong) - she'd be awesome to moderate a discussion workshop

Building up to a bigger event for next year

If we're looking to build this event up for next year and say get a grant from City of Ballarat, it would be a good idea to have:

  • good quality photos of the day - anyone know an enthusiastic amateur photographer?
  • a count of numbers for the day
  • a way of collecting some contact details for announcing the 2014 event
  • possibly a brief post-event survey - "how likely are you to recommend this event to a friend?"