People in New York? - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Hiyas,

This just came across the OpenOffice.org marketing mailing list.  It
mentions an Open Source software mini-conference organised by the City
of New York and at which databases are a main feature.

It sounds like PostgreSQL wasn't known about by the organisers, as they
demonstrated MySQL and .... MS Access as that's what's available for many.

If someone in New York city wants to start the ball rolling by taking
some time and effort to contact the relevant people in the council there
and assist them in adopting PostgreSQL as their primary database for
recommendations for the future, then I think you'd find a lot of good
ideas and assistance from the people on this list.  Command Prompt comes
to mind for one.

Thoughts anyone?

:-)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Marketing] ** EVENT POST MORTEM **  Verdict from Not For
Profits:  OOo is so    good, it's invisible
Date: 08 Oct 2003 16:25:36 -0400
From: Sam Hiser <shiser@cloud9.net>
Reply-To: dev@marketing.openoffice.org
To: OpenOffice.org  Marketing List <dev@marketing.openoffice.org>
CC: OOo MarCon Press Release ONLY List <marcon@marketing.openoffice.org>

FYI y'all-

Spent the day at "Demystifying Open Source" a mini-conference here in
NYC sponsored by the Fund for the City of New York, which has a Computer
Academy for supporting not-for profit entities.

I did not present, was in the audience.  Handed out "Freedom Suite"
t-shirts to the staff of the Fund and schmoozed a bit.

Notably the agenda was (predictably perhaps) primarily about Intro to
OSS and equally about the Workshops and Consulting Services that the
Fund provides (for revenues) to local NFP's.  Among these services, the
major focus is on LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) and database management
cases in which DB's are a MAJOR tool on which NFP's depend for managing
their donor and client lists and for tracking things and Web site
content mgmt (CMS).  Also, MS Access features large in the work flow of
the Fund and the average NFP because that's "what's around a lot."

For example the Fund dba staff have built an app that's GPL's but uses
Access as a front-end.  The Free Software guys who were there nearly
swallowed their tongues, but the practical needs of NFP's -- which is
that they have $0 budgets for IT -- is calling for open source and using
whatever is available.  They are not an ideological vertical.

What was striking today from my own point of view was that OOo usually
commands a certain center of attention.  But they did not seem very
interested, to be sure -- except to check some personal experiences with
doc incompatibility.  However, some of the NFP attendees appear to JUST
USE OOo without beating an eyelash and seem to accept it -- like water
is wet.  My sence is that for them, it's just a reality and there's
nothing said about it.  TOTAL ACCEPTANCE.

They are very eager to have support for Linux on the desktop (with all
their donated Pentium II's), so I predict that the Not-For-Profit
vertical is one that will be pretty completely served by Linux and OOo's
bundling there; and they will need to be supported by other NFP support
entities like the Fund because there are minimal consulting profits
there to be had.  But -- for purpose of OOo's Q specification -- the
database seems to be a killer app that dominates like no app dominates
in any vertical I have seen.

Another vote of confidence for OOo, though.  What it indicates to me is
that once all the straw-man arguements by the MS-church (like needing to
wait for 100% doc compatibility) are rendered moot, OOo and the Free
stack will simply be accepted like H(2)O and O(2).  It will just take
longer in certain verticals -- particularly American big business.
Conclusions: NFP's would be a lower priority in my view than, say,
Schools (OOoEDU).  What do people think?

-Sam



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