some help for upcoming presentation

[Andrei Sebastian Cimpean]

Hello everybody. I am a member of a lug in my hometown and we have several
presentations in high schools about linux and open source. I took upon myself
the mission to present and interest people in KDE. I am a KDE user and i think
i won't have problems just showing it off, but i want to really make a good
impression, that would make people try KDE and maybe fell in love with it just
as I am. I was wondering if you have some advices I should take into
considerations, some info you think should be present in the presentation or
just some do-s and don't-s. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.


 
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[Jos Poortvliet-4]

On Saturday 24 October 2009 16:04:19 Andrei Sebastian Cimpean wrote:

> Hello everybody. I am a member of a lug in my hometown and we have several
> presentations in high schools about linux and open source. I took upon
>  myself the mission to present and interest people in KDE. I am a KDE user
>  and i think i won't have problems just showing it off, but i want to
>  really make a good impression, that would make people try KDE and maybe
>  fell in love with it just as I am. I was wondering if you have some
>  advices I should take into considerations, some info you think should be
>  present in the presentation or just some do-s and don't-s. Any help will
>  be greatly appreciated.
> Thank you.

Well, what should be there, that's a though one. Depends on the public, of
course. You can find some sample presentations at *

Schools are an interesting challenge, I recently gave a workshop and the
students didn't know jack ;-)
So you might have to explain FOSS first, and what it is, how it works. Why it
works. I generally ask 'who knows the difference between Freeware and Free
Software?' and take it from there. If the public knows that difference and
understands FOSS, you can go deeper by asking 'and what's the difference
between Free Software and Open Source Software?'. This can then help you
explain the history and wider movement (Foss is part of (and inspired) the
free culture movement - sharing knowledge and creativity. Think wikipedia and
creative commons). And OSS points to the more practical advantages - an
efficient development model which many companies are investing millions in,
like Nokia, IBM, Intel and even Microsoft.

You can use the generic KDE talk (in condensed from) to explain KDE, what we
do, why we do it etc.

Good luck and thanks for your effort!

* http://www.kde.org/kdeslides/


 
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For a school presentation, the best way to go forward is probably not to try
and enforce a completely new philosophy on them right away. Starting with the
philosophy is good and vital, but keep it to the bare minimums.

What's more important from my personal opinion is to use KDE (if you want to)
as a case study for this and present it as a comparison instead of a
standalone project. It's very easy for students to quickly relate and thus
understand if all you do is compare.

What it should not be, is a whole list of pretty pictures :)


 
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[Jos Poortvliet-4]

On Sunday 25 October 2009 01:37:11 Dion Moult wrote:
> For a school presentation, the best way to go forward is probably not to
>  try and enforce a completely new philosophy on them right away. Starting
>  with the philosophy is good and vital, but keep it to the bare minimums.

Funny, my mail can be seen as promoting the opposite ;-)

But you're right, talking too much about the philosophy behind Free Software
is boring for many, esp the non-it students. Same with too much 'underlying
technology'. Get to the goods, show Amarok, Digikam, Krita & play with
Plasma,... Programmers might like a short view of Kate & maybe KDevelop.
KDEgames & KDE edu also have very nice things.

> What's more important from my personal opinion is to use KDE (if you want
>  to) as a case study for this and present it as a comparison instead of a
>  standalone project. It's very easy for students to quickly relate and thus
>  understand if all you do is compare.

That's a different way, yes, using a case study. Depends on the public, I
guess. Of course the case study could also be a series of demonstrations of
doing common things in a very nice and effective KDE-way.

> What it should not be, is a whole list of pretty pictures :)



 
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[Andrei Sebastian Cimpean]

On Sunday 25 October 2009 03:31:30 am Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> course the case study could also be a ser
>
First off let me thank you for the help. I feel that i provided to few
informations. This is a combined effort, and there will be many more people,
each tackling one subject. I chose KDE because i feel i can present it better
than let's say GNOME, which was my first assignment.
Due to time restrictions, I also have a very limited amount of time to make
people interested. I guess I can expect roughly 10 minutes or so. It is an
impossible task because we have in total an hour per each high-school in the
city to get them interested in open source and linux. So i was thinking of
making some comparisons  with m$ windows xp, vista , 7,  mac os x and gnome.
And i was thinking of  dividing my presentation after a steve jobs model, show
a number of great features that are innovative and in the end show something
eye catchy(i was thinking here of the 3d globe background).
I want to talk about the customization level, plasmoids and the great software
that is bundled within kde.
Hope I can get it right.


 
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[Carl Symons]

First of all to the group, apologies for not changing the post subject
previously

> Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:06:11 +0200
> From: Andrei Sebastian Cimpean <andreiamenta@...>
> Subject: Re: [kde-promo] kde-promo Digest, Vol 79, Issue 32
> To: KDE Promo <kde-promo@...>
>>
> Thank you for your time. You managed to give me some strong points that I can
> follow. This alone helps me a lot. I will probably use the info you gave me
> and mold it to my style. This is great. Thanks a lot for your help. I hope now
> i can be up to the challenge and present KDE in a way that intrigues most
> people.
>
> This is still a project of the lug in which I am a member and is restricted
> just to this side of my country, but there are talks and also this acts as a
> prototype project to see if it can be applied on large scale, meaning all the
> lugs could present open source and linux in high-schools from around the
> country. I guess it would be great if we get there.
>

You're welcome. The real work came from the KDE community...creating
something that is worth getting excited about, and developing ways to
communicate about it.

As far as your role goes, you are already up to the challenge. It is
clear that you are already committed to open source, Linux and KDE,
and excited about the opportunity. Those are the key ingredients to
presenting well. Most negative-seeming responses are not about you or
your presentation. In the high schools here in the U.S., it isn't cool
to be excited.

There are two things that I remind myself when presenting:
- Despite appearances, the people in the audience want you to succeed.
They are generally forgiving of presentation blunders.
- Despite appearances, people want to be excited about something. If
all you do is convey your own excitement, your presentation will be
successful. The reasons you are excited or technical details aren't so
important. In other words, "I'll have what the fellow on the floor is
having."

A corollary is that the hardest part of the presentation--being
yourself--is done.

Regarding doing something on a larger scale, has your LUG considered
doing a Linux Fest? Check out Ontario Linux Fest (onlinux.ca), Ohio
(ohiolinux.org), SCALE (http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/), ABLEConf
(ableconf.com). I am one of the organizers of LinuxFest Northwest
(linuxfestnorthwest.org). These are all expos created and produced by
local groups. The organizers of any of them would be happy to support
your LUG.
 
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On October 24, 2009, Andrei Sebastian Cimpean wrote:
> Hello everybody. I am a member of a lug in my hometown and we have several
> presentations in high schools about linux and open source. I took upon
>  myself the mission to present and interest people in KDE. I am a KDE user

terrific :)

so:

* who will you be presenting to? students? teachers? administration?

* what do you want the result to be? (yes, "fall in love with kde", but what
actions do you want them to take?)

* where are you going to be promoting the use of KDE? in the school itself
(e.g. classroom computer labs), at home (student's using it for personal
computing)?

you only have 10 minutes, so you probably only have time for a very quick
intro, e.g. in the form Carl laid out, highlighting of a couple of exciting
features, an inspirational sentence or two and then an action item.

btw, when highlighting exciting features, find clever ways to show other
features. e.g. when i launch an application in front of an audience, i usually
do it with krunner and then casually mention to them while the app is coming
up that i can do all sorts of things in that window like math, unit
conversions, searching for files and contacts, web addresses ... fills in the
couple seconds some of the more complex apps take to launch and without
distracting from the main topic too much another cool feature is snuck into
the presentation ;)

another trick is to put some apps pre-launched on different desktops, have
desktop effects turned on and then switch between the desktops triggering the
cube-on-desktop-switch or flipping between the windows using expose. you don't
have to explain those things, people will simply start drooling on the way to
you showing them how cool Amarok or whatever is :)

anyways, if you could answer the above 3 questions a bit then it might be
possible to offer some more concrete suggestions/thoughts.

--
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks


 
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