[NBLUG/talk] Fwd: OOo education marketing strategy

[Lincoln Peters]

I just got this message from Ian.  He has partially formalized the strategy 
for putting OpenOffice in schools, although he is certain that the exacy 
procedure will vary by country.

I live in Rohnert Park, and I know that I can get CD's to Rancho Cotate High 
School.  I can also try to get something to happen in Thomas Page School 
(the K-8 school in Cotati) and Marguerite Hahn Elementary School.  If anyone 
on this list has even one contact in any school (teacher OR student), I 
would strongly recommend that you try to get the word into the school, even 
if you cannot be there on October 13 and/or you cannot burn CD's.  We *will* 
find a way to get those CD's into their hands.

Ian is also interested in the names of anyone who wants to participate (so 
that he can say how big the effort really is when he writes the press 
release).  If you want to get involved, send an e-mail either to me or to 
Ian <ian.lynch2 at ntlworld.com>.  Use the subject line "OOoEduHelper" if you 
e-mail Ian.


For those who might fail to see the advantages of OpenOffice over Microsoft 
Office: consider that Microsoft Office XP Professional costs $429.99 at 
CompUSA.  At Tiger Direct (http://www.tigerdirect.com/), CD-R media costs as 
little as $0.17 per disc.  That means that, for the price of one copy of 
Microsoft Office XP Professional, one could burn 2,529 OpenOffice CD's!  
Furthermore, there is no limit, theoretical or legal, to the number of 
computers that you could install OpenOffice on with just one of those 2,529 
CD's!

And if that's not enough, a complete list of new features in OpenOffice 1.1 
(many of which are completely lacking in Microsoft Office) is available at 
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/1.1rc3/features.html





Lincoln




>From: ian <ian.lynch2 at ntlworld.com>
>Subject: OOo education marketing strategy
>Date: 17 Aug 2003 13:41:16 +0100
>
>Hi,
>
>You are being sent this message because you expressed interest in
>helping with the launch of a marketing strategy for Education starting
>on October 13th 2003, OOo's third birthday. If you no longer wish to
>participate please E-mail me and let me know and I'll remove you from
>the list.
>
>There will be differences in different countries and so we need a broad
>strategy that can be "localised" to fit individual circumstances. Here
>is the basic strategy
>
>Goal 1.
>
>Get as many activists as possible worldwide
>
>Effective strategies: Tap into your contacts and mailing list where
>these are likely to be sympathetic. I have had a good response from
>Schoolforge, AFFS, Linux User Groups. It only takes an E-mail to a
>suitable list so potential large gain for small effort. I encourage
>non-native speakers of English to do this because its less likely that
>the messages set out in English will cross the language barrier without
>this. Encourage anyone taking part to drop me a minimal E-mail with the
>title OOoEduHelper so I can keep a list of all the helpers. It will help
>if they say whether they want to be added to this list or not and if so
>their location and briefly what they propose to do.
>
>Goal 2.
>
>Get as many schools as possible aware that OOo exists
>
>This simply requires contacting schools and providing factual
>information.ie There is a free Office Suite they can download from
>www.OpenOffice.org and there are sources of supply on CD-ROM for nominal
>media costs. The software is designed for easy migration from MS Office
>and has a high degree of file compatibility with it. The software has
>functions of significant value to education the go beyond those found in
>MS Office. eg Ability to save in pdf format and a powerful drawing and
>design program. The method of contacting the schools will depend on
>local organisation. In some cases it will be just a matter of talking to
>a friend or relative who works in a particular school, in others it
>might be possible to contact the administration responsible for a group
>of schools. Remember one school contacted is better than no schools
>contacted so don't assume that if you can't do a lot its not worthwhile.
>Every little bit helps.
>
>Goal 3.
>
>Get OOo to as many students as possible
>
>This is the next step on from Goal 2. Again, it will to an extent depend
>on local circumstances. If for example you just want to burn some CDs
>for the project, we need to be able to transfer these to someone who can
>distribute to them in schools. It would therefore be helpful if you
>could E-mail me back with some idea of where you are located eg Country,
>State/county/region and briefly the extent of your participation
>
>eg contact a school raise awareness, or burn 50 CDs, but I need a
>distributor or burn 100 CDs and distribute them myself.
>
>I can't be absolutely sure how this will work out but lets give it a go
>and see.
>
>The final version of OOo 1.1 should be available before the end of
>August and there should be an iso. On this assumption I propose where
>possible to use the "official" ISO from the OOo Website as far as
>possible. If this makes life difficult as you already have plans to
>distribute OOo as part of a different package then Ok, but try and make
>it vers 1.1 as it has some clear advantages that will help further the
>marketing effort. The bottom line is that any OOo is better than no OOo
>but 1.1 is what we should be aiming for.
>
>Goal 4 Publicity
>
>If we can make a press announcement that hundreds of volunteers around
>the world are supporting schools in getting free Office Software it is
>likely to be newsworthy which is why I need evidence of all the
>helpers.We have no advertising budget but this sort of exposure is
>better than "paid for" advertising. I'll prepare a press release nearer
>the time and again if any of you can send it to as many journals in your
>country/locality as possible it will be a big help
>
>Goal 5 Platform for future development.
>
>I see this as a beginning rather than a one off opportunity. Some of you
>might like to stick with it others to do different things. I believe
>that if we can get even a small number of schools to set up Young
>Enterprise Schemes based on OOo it will make a massive impact on what
>can be done. Schools often want young people to be more enterprising and
>to develop business skills. Marketing OOo is an ideal vehicle because it
>has very low start up costs and yet has wide market application. Pupils
>can set up their own small businesses to market and support OOo in their
>local communities as part of their learning. They can learn about the
>issues of business costs, competition, customer relationships etc with a
>real product of worldwide significance. If you do get schools that are
>interested in OOo see what they think about this type of idea. We can
>support it centrally through Education pages on the web site so you will
>not necessarily have to commit time to this.
>
>Ok, that's it for now. I will get some more support information to you
>before too long either using this mail list or a combination of this and
>the web site.
>
>--
>ian <ian.lynch2 at ntlworld.com>
>

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