[K12OSN] NELS & FOSS-Education Association

[cliebow at midmaine.com]

Sorry to miss this...but i blew my budget goint to Montreal for ubuntu
below zero and linuxworld in April...Proospects arent good for unh meeting
either since i am holding down two jobs..but interested in the consultant
thing, having made some real contributions to ltsp albeit with a little
help from Matt and from Chris..Sticking my oar in just the same..8~)chuck

> 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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