[northwestengland.pm] Reminder: MFS Talk. Tues, 20 Sept. "FreedomBox: Enabling private conversations online", Sam Tuke.

[Ludovic Tolhurst-Cleaver]

Yup.  In fact I still have the RMS book I bought from you guys on my desk,
except I've finallly started reading it.  It's very readable, I'm just
weeeeeeeelllll busy all the time.  Not only at work - I now have three
little girls (2-year old twins and a new baby).  This is why I've only ever
been to two NWE.pm meetings, for instance.

Anyway, back then you wanted to start a free software society at MMU.  So
did I.  However, you were suggesting something involving the students'
union.  I'd still like to do this but I don't know many students
personally.  I also tend to avoid the union apart from to go in and get cash
out and the odd newspaper.  And I have started chatting to some of the
staff.  So it's not like I'm never there...

However, as one of the My MMU portal developers I am at least aware of and
indeed administer (though don't have 100% say as to what goes on) the
to-all-student messaging systems that exist inside MMU. (Though they're
actually mostly down at the moment - not my fault incidentally! :-)

But anyway, I think the natural home for the more geeked out stus and staff
at MMU is the John Dalton building on the other side of the road, which is
the Sci & Eng building of course.  This is where the BCS Methods & Tools
group occasionally meets.  But of course arranging space in the MMUnion
building is probably a lot easier.  But you'd certainly want to concentrate
marketing and communication of any events on that building. (in paper terms
of course... then there's online... but the trouble is, there's such a big
Internet out there.)

My fiendish plan was to involve as many academics as wouldn't make the stus
not want to turn up.  Or of course we could just try to inveigle them under
the same banner but to different events.  Maybe we could get some help from
the BCS too -- like the Computer Conservation Soc. do.

Long-term, I'd like to bring Manchester University and MMU academics and
management round to a point of view where they remember that computers were
invented on Oxford Road (sort of) and that Manchester's excellent data
processing heritage is such that they shouldn't let themselves be dicateted
to by some bunch of muppets in Redmond, WA (or even Reading, Berkshire) and
instead go a proudly non-Microsoft, more European route.  (Although a lot of
my favourite bits of software come from America, such as GNU/Linux, Perl
etc., at least Linus represents a big piece of European heritage, plus all
FLOSS stuff is much more international in build and outlook (not that you'll
need me to tell you).  Then there's SUSE and MySQL of course, etc.)  I work
with .NET and SharePoint (even the name makes me puke) and I'd love to see
all that Microsoft crap swept away.  (most at least)

I'd love to say I can do lots of organising and arrangement but as mentioned
above I generally find it pretty hard to find time for things.  I can barely
even go to stuff at the moment, let alone organise it.  In fact I'm already
over-committed.  But if I were to be involved with anything, stuff at MMU
(especially if it were e.g. lunchtime rather than evening) would be the
easiest to plan / help plan, market / help market and/or attend.

I'd also be delighted to hear about more MFS stuff... are you going to keep
on posting it to the NWE.pm mailing list or was this a one-off?

Ta,
Ludo.

All the best an

On 21 September 2011 21:28, Michael Dorrington <michael.dorrington at gmail.com
> wrote:

> On 20/09/11 15:28, Ludovic Tolhurst-Cleaver wrote:
> > Dear Mike,
> >
> > Did you do a Mancheester Free Software Roadshow at MMU Law School /
> Sandra
> > Burslem Building in 2009?
>
> It wasn't really a Roadshow but we did have a stall at an MMU event
> called "Pro-Dev" in 2009. Hopefully you have good memories of it! :)
>
> Mike.
>
>
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>
>


-- =

Ludovic Tolhurst-Cleaver
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