LinuxSA July 2008 - Linux & FOSS Adoption: A case study, road map and story

  Hi all,

  Time for the July meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm on Tuesday, 15th July, 2008
   Where:  EXCOM Education
           Ground Floor
           191 Pulteney Street
           Adelaide SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Piers Rowan will be giving a talk on "Linux & FOSS Adoption: A case
   study, road map and story":

   Many people use Linux as their preferred desktop. Many web sites
   are hosted on Linux. But why would a "run of the mill" business
   adopt Linux across desktops and servers alike?

   Just over two short years ago Extrastaff had two offices with a
   dependency on Windows systems for desktops and servers. Today
   Extrastaff has nearly 10 offices in two countries and a big part of
   this growth has been partly due to Linux and FOSS. Any business can
   benefit from the lessons learned in this process.

   This presentation will cover the various stages of the process,
   including:

   * The background decisions and objections
   * How to talk to management about adoption issues
   * Change management from the user perspective
   * Roll your own: making your own rules & a point of difference with
     your customers
   * Making the System Administrator's job easier
   * What went wrong, what to do when things go wrong
   * Capturing innovation

   The areas which Extrastaff uses Linux & FOSS

   * Desktops
   * Internet Kiosks 
   * CRM
   * Web site hosting
   * Candidate management
   * Document storage
   * Domain controllers
   * Content filtering
   * Email / Webmail / etc
   * Payroll
   * Billing system
   * Messaging Services

   The presentation is aimed at being interesting to everyone
   interested in Linux, and also owners and managers who would like to
   hear about how they can benefit from this excellent business tool.

   About Piers Rowan:

   I am a Director and shareholder in Extrastaff Recruitment.
   Extrastaff is a 2nd generation family business which my brother and
   I purchased a little over two years ago. Previous to holding this
   position I was split between the roles of Marketing & IT Management.
   Coming from the technical side I am always keen to tinker and get
   something up and running and having the marketing background means
   that I am always focused on what benefit the tinkering will have on
   the customer or business.

   I have been using/breaking computers since the ZX Spectrum and did
   my time in the Windows 98 trenches. I'm running Ubuntu at the moment
   but have used Fedora on my laptops quite a bit. For servers I've
   used Red Hat 9.0, CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora and the occasional Solaris
   and BSD. Most of my "productive" time is spent writing software that
   is critical to my business. I first started using Linux in 1999.

  Pizza:

   We'll order in pizza to have at EXCOM after the presentation.  Bring
   $8 if you are hungry.

  For more information:

   Email:        organisers@linuxsa.org.au
   Web Page:     http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
   Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
   IRC:          #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net

| 10 Jul 2008 | #