[Open-graphics] OGP presentation in Utrecht, The Netherlands, October 6th

[Lourens Veen]

On Sunday 09 September 2007 20:33:29 Lourens Veen wrote:
> There's another presentation on OGP coming up! I've been asked by the
> Dutch Linux User's Group to speak about the project at the Dutch
> incarnation of Software Freedom Day[1], which will be held in Utrecht
> on the afternoon of Saturday October 6th.

Well, I'm back from Utrecht and it was great.

First of all I met lots of interesting people with lots of interesting 
projects, and I saw presentations on such varying things as the 
practical use of Creative Commons licences, the c,mm,n Open Car (and 
that's not open as in without a roof), use of Linux in a secondary 
school, as well as a talk about the Open Search project. I missed the 
one on GNU Radio unfortunately, as well as a few other interesting 
ones. Can we make an open cloning device next? I'd like to be able to 
visit two talks at the same time next time.

Anyway, the room was packed for my OGP/OHF presentation, there really 
seems to be a lot of interest in the community in this project (it's 
probably relatively unknown as well, so that people are more likely to 
choose it over other subjects that they know more about). It was my 
first time doing something like this and I had no idea of what kind of 
audience I would be talking to, but I think it went over well. The 
driver/documentation problem is well-known in various communities, and 
I get the feeling that a lot of people would like to see us succeed. I 
also think I sold an OGD1, to be delivered yesterday if possible :-).

I got some good comments afterwards (thanks Geert!) about trying to get 
people to ask for documentation and support whenever they buy their 
next piece of hardware. Indeed, I was mostly telling people what we 
were doing, rather than enticing them to get involved and to help get 
documentation, and I feel that that was a missed opportunity. Next time 
I'm going to put in some more "come on and join us, it's cool!" vibes.

I also talked quite a bit with Jacco Lammers of the c,mm,n project, 
which is about an open source car. Well, car. They've applied the idea 
of the services-based business model with such a vengeance that the 
only resemblance the thing has to a car is its physical appearance. 
It's an entirely new (at least to me) concept, very cool.

Anyway, there are other open designs for cars (but the c,mm,n project 
intends to actually build something, like we do) and the people 
involved in those were very interested in the c,mm,n licence. I talked 
some about the OHF and Open Hardware in general, and there is 
definitely some interest in that from that corner. There are other 
hardware licencing noises coming from various angles as well. The time 
to really start working on this may be here soon. If we're quick 
enough, we might avoid or at least mitigate the licence proliferation 
problems that we have in the software world. Something to think about 
at least.

I intend to put the final version of my presentation up on the wiki, 
with text and slides, for future use. But I need some sleep now first.

Lourens
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