[PLUG] Free Geek Publicity; OSS, too.

[Eric Harrison]

On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Rich Shepard wrote:

>  There is a full-page article on page 3 of the current issue of the
>"Portland Business Journal" <http://portland.bizjournals.com/>. Highly
>laudatory and great publicity for Oso and his crew.

Probably understates Free Geek's accomplishments and worth ;-)

Losing StRUT (the education twin of FreeGeek) has had a significant
negative impact on the state.

Earlier today I was mulling over that I have not done anything significant
for Free Geek since I gave a presentation with Oto and Greg (former 
director of StRUT) on reusing discarded hardware in schools.  I need to
redirect the weight I had put behind StRUT into Free Geek.

>  When Free Geek received more funding from the Meyer Memorial Trust, the
>donor recognized that Free Geek could help other non-profits with their
>computing needs and benefit all parties. Currently, among other projects,
>the Free Geek organization is creating a medical records system for a
>non-profit health care provider. While the programmers get less pay than the
>market is now offering, for those out of work it is an opportunity to keep
>their resume fresh.

I'm impressed that the Meyer Memorial Trust understood this. Despite a 
good fight, we could not get this concept across to the state to keep
StRUT's doors open.

>  I am encouraged to see such articles in the Biz Journal. They are open to
>this so perhaps we'll see something about the Linux K-12 effort in there in
>the near future. (Hint. Hint.)

The Linux K-12 effort spends its time working on K12 technology issues. We're
the technology guys, not the PR guys. But we also tend to be permitted to
give interviews should one of us get a call about the responsible use of
tax payer funds, inter-agency cooperation, unique partnerships, leveraging
economies of scale, clever ways of expanding the quality/quantity of service
in the face of declining resources, etc, etc. (Hint. Hint.)

-Eric