[K12OSN] NELS & FOSS-Education Association

[Chris Bacigalupo]

Please add me to the list of interested participants!

I'd be eager to contribute time and energy to formation of such a group

On Wed, 2006-06-21 at 15:58 -0400, Bryant Patten wrote:
> Once again, David and Matt put on an awesome NELS gathering in Bethel, 
> Maine.  Thanks guys!
> 
> Much fun, lots of swapping of stories and expertise, and as others 
> mentioned, more teachers - which is really exciting.  The food was 
> again fabulous - tough to complain about roast beef, shrimp and 
> chocolate cake (to give an example of one excellent meal).  I just 
> don't understand why David doesn't ever mention the food  :)
> 
> We also discussed the idea of starting an association 
> (group/co-op/guild/organization) of Open Source and Education 
> consultants.  Not surprisingly we ran smack into a definition of who 
> should be in this group but as a start we said the target is people 
> whose primary focus of their for-profit business is helping schools use 
> open source.  There were several of us at the conference (David Trask - 
> CopperDog, Matt Oquist - Majen, Chris Johnson - Dirigo, Bill Sconce- In 
> Spec, Inc., Bryant Patten - White Nitro) who met and tried to answer 
> some of the following questions:
> 
> 	1) How many FOSS and education consultants are out there in the US?  
> (5? 50? 500? 5000?)
> 	2) Would such an organization help? (make school admin people feel 
> FOSS is legit, share resources, sponsor conferences)
> 	3) Should it be free or charge dues? (Dues could fund NELS-like 
> conferences in other parts of the country)
> 	4) Who should join? (consultants, schools, product companies...)
> 	4) Does something like this already exists?
> 
> I have discussed this idea with some other consultants and plan to 
> bring it up with people at NECC as well.  I volunteered to push this 
> forward for a bit and see what happens so please let me know (on list 
> or off) any thoughts, resources or suggestions.
> 
> Bryant Patten
> White Nitro, LLC
> opensource at whitenitro.com
> 
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