Tuesday, September 19, 2006

VOIP for Lingarra

I introduced the Lingarra folks to VOIP and audacity yesterday.

After adding the universe repository in ubuntu, we installed wengophone, ekiga and audacity with Synaptic.

Bret created an account and called my landline with it. Yay for free calls. I spoke with a couple of the kids who said the liked using the computers. I guess they probably found it weird speaking to someone through the computer mic! Interesting times ahead. :)

I also think they could do some cool stuff with audacity...record language...make a podcast..record music...the possibilities are endless!

We will tackle the use of ekiga next because i think it has better sound quality.

Another one on the list is skype but we couldn't find it with Synaptic...looks like a download is in order.

Software Freedom Day 06 - Success!!

So we had a very successful event at the Melbourne Town Hall...lots of different FOSS groups came along and got involved. Some even travelled from distances afar. All up around 200-300 people attended the event. Lots of ordinary folks coming along to find out more about Linux. Judging by the emails I have received people who attended had a great day!

The door man (who also has some free software to try) commented that everyone who came out was pretty happy and impressed with what they saw inside. :)

I was kept fairly busy with some technical hitches and forgotten things...plus general stuff with the Computerbank team. I got to catch up with a lot of people and hope to speak to them again in the future.

My favorite bit was the dance off between Tux and uber-geek Rob. :)

We had two film crews - CMS/Channel 31 and Tektime - so we should get some interesting videos. CMS / Channel 31 already made a community service annoucement for the event. I hope they upload it somewhere! It was great! Photos also coming soon (as soon as people send them to me).

Bit of feedback and reflection - maybe a stall with spruikers out the front (more balloons and signs saying stuff like 'free event, free internet, free things'), more penguin action, more direct marketing to different groups (e.g. visits to schools and community groups with talks in the lead up to the event). Try harder on the jugglers and performance artists. Involve more community groups. Going on the John Feine show, other radio media. A big group SFD shot would have also been cool to have. I should have also checked IRC - Bret from Lingarra was online waiting for us to do a SFD hook up. Oops.

While heaps of people did help (thanks heaps, you know who you are), a little more help with stuff would have been good. I was staying up quite late nights just to keep on top of my computerbank and sfd workload.

For SFD in general - for everyone's benefit - a big google banner ad - pointing people to SFD website.

Other highlights and activities on the day included the LUV CD handout (1000 cd's in less than an hour), the LUV installfest and the Victorian School of Languages Dutch Class using audacity as a study aid (with Computerbank laptops!, yay!).

A great! day for Software Freedom in Melbourne! Hooray!