cozski
May 5th, 2010, 12:15 PM
Hello
I'm hoping that some people may be able to provide me with some advice/sign-posting/guidance etc.
My day job is as a Community Development Worker in Dublin, Ireland... work that I have been involved in for approx 12 years, across Dublin & Belfast. One of the things that has always struck me in my work is the dependency voluntary & community organisations have with established commercial technologies. To a certain degreee this is understandable... the IT guy said we need this and he's the IT guy so he must be right... that kinda makes sense in alot of organisations. But most people familiar with the options will quickly realise that this is not always the the most efficient & effective way for your organisation to work... particularly in a climate of increasingly scarce resources... and let me assure you, it's always the poorer end of society that gets hit first.
Anyway, to cut to the chase. I'm enquiring about how I might be able to bring the 'options' to groups/organisations who have never previously been exposed to them. I constantly see groups shelling out small fortunes for desktop PCs and laptops that they simply do not need - includes Windows 7 of course. For most vol/comm organisations they require word processing, internet browsing and some limited multi-media capability... certainly nothing that requires 500-700 euros per unit. The problem is that they simply do not know that these alternatives exist. Are there people who can be brought into an environment where they are able to 'sell' the idea of doing things differently? Are there people I can approach who might deliver a talk, have an information stall or carry out a series of workshops demonstrating how voluntary/community organisations can save money, still be effective (if not more) and promote the ethos of open source computing? I'm in the process of organising a large community funding market and having this as a key element to expose groups too would be fantastic... but I simply dont know how to go about it.
Anything you can suggest would be warmly welcomed....
Thanks :p
I'm hoping that some people may be able to provide me with some advice/sign-posting/guidance etc.
My day job is as a Community Development Worker in Dublin, Ireland... work that I have been involved in for approx 12 years, across Dublin & Belfast. One of the things that has always struck me in my work is the dependency voluntary & community organisations have with established commercial technologies. To a certain degreee this is understandable... the IT guy said we need this and he's the IT guy so he must be right... that kinda makes sense in alot of organisations. But most people familiar with the options will quickly realise that this is not always the the most efficient & effective way for your organisation to work... particularly in a climate of increasingly scarce resources... and let me assure you, it's always the poorer end of society that gets hit first.
Anyway, to cut to the chase. I'm enquiring about how I might be able to bring the 'options' to groups/organisations who have never previously been exposed to them. I constantly see groups shelling out small fortunes for desktop PCs and laptops that they simply do not need - includes Windows 7 of course. For most vol/comm organisations they require word processing, internet browsing and some limited multi-media capability... certainly nothing that requires 500-700 euros per unit. The problem is that they simply do not know that these alternatives exist. Are there people who can be brought into an environment where they are able to 'sell' the idea of doing things differently? Are there people I can approach who might deliver a talk, have an information stall or carry out a series of workshops demonstrating how voluntary/community organisations can save money, still be effective (if not more) and promote the ethos of open source computing? I'm in the process of organising a large community funding market and having this as a key element to expose groups too would be fantastic... but I simply dont know how to go about it.
Anything you can suggest would be warmly welcomed....
Thanks :p