[Opensource] [crossposted] September 15th is Software Freedom Day

[Pia Waugh]

Hi Margaret,

<quote who="margaret.lawson at konstantkaos.net">

> A very excited Year 8 student reminded me today that we have to start
> planning for Software Freedom Day in September and that this year the
> T-shirts are lime green!

Yay! :) I'm actually the President of Software Freedom International, the
people behind Software Freedom Day (another of my hats :) and I'm really
excited to see you getting into the event! We already have over 140 teams
registered for this year and registrations for teams wanting to receive the
free tshirts, stickers, balloons and CDs for their events close on the 31st
July, so make sure you register your events soon!

  Current teams:  http://softwarefreedomday.org/map/2007

  Registration:  http://softwarefreedomday.org/registration

> Last year our Year 7/8 Computer Club at St. Michael's planned the
> celebration for the friday before SFD (this year it is the 14th
> September):
> * Students made an advertisement for SFD, with the Farnham song "Freedom".
> * They presented their advertisement at assembly and spoke about SFD and
> what OpenSource means.
> * We had the Open CD and Ubuntu disks to hand out on the day (but this
> year we are taking donations for a charity for DVD's).
> * We also did a video stream from our multimedia room into the canteen
> area where students demonstrated how easy it was to use Firefox,
> OpenOffice, Gimp and Audacity.

Wow!! Is the video publicly available? It would be fantastic if you could
put some details up. Perhaps ask whether the students would like to make an
inspirational video about Software Freedom Day that could be sent to teams
all around the world!! If they wanted to do something in preparation for the
event, I could coordinate an interview with Triple J to talk to them about
why they think it is important (which will also help get the word out about
the event :). Let me know what you think.

> We got T-shirts for the kids and had orange balloons to go with the colour
> theme for the day. We celebrated SFD on the Friday before the *actual*
> day.

Heh, cool :) All teams get 3 free shirts as part of registration (before the
31st July!!) but you can also buy more shirts for $15 each (with the team
discount code sfdt3 at ms) at http://sfd.zac-ware.com/

> Not sure what we will do this year, but the kids seem enthused!
> 
> International site: http://softwarefreedomday.org/
> Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Day
> Melbourne team page: http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/oceania/au/Melbourne

Thanks Margaret and have a great event! I look forward to hearing more about
your efforts! I think Software Freedom Day is a great way to educate
students and the general public about why transparent and sustainable
technologies are important to ensuring we maintain a high standard of life
and freedom well into the future. I wrote an article about it here that may
be of interest.

  http://softwarefreedomday.org/SoftwareFreedom

Cheers,
Pia
 
-- 
Software Freedom Day                          http://softwarefreedomday.org/